The Dance We Must Do
by WhenThePawn84
Summary: AU-Historically, Jane's younger sister, Elizabeth, was married to Cromwell's son, Gregory. But, what if the Master Secretary decided to claim Elizabeth Seymour for himself? Would things have ended any differently?
1. Chapter 1

_Her first memory of him is fear. Not the sort of fear that wakes her up from a bad dream, or roots itself in her mind when she has had no word from her brothers after days of hunting. This fear is entirely new. Somehow more visceral, and attenuated. The lump begins in the back of her throat and slides down into her belly—like she took a sip of warmed ale that was too hot. The weight slides through her bowels and comes to rest between her legs. She is an intact virgin, but she recognizes immediately the sexuality of this fear. The misfortune of every woman to have this intuition, to be able to read a particular danger in a particular situation. Every woman past a certain age recognizes this dawning dread. Suddenly, she is not afraid of the Boleyns, the Tower, or the King. She only fears Thomas Cromwell. A wave comes over her as she registers that Sir Richard Rich is not present; he has been present for all of the questioning of Queen Anne's ladies. Instead, she sits alone in a drafty antechamber, in some half forgotten part of the palace. A desk between her and Cromwell, nothing else. He holds her gaze relentlessly. She drops her eyes long enough to note that he has neither quill nor paper with him. So, she folds her hands together demurely on the desk. She will play a game with herself in which she imagines the world beyond this isolated room with a door that bolts from the outside._

_ "I am not sure why I am here," she confesses. To be fair, she does not feign ignorance. Her family is no friend of the Howards, no friend of the Boleyns. Queen Anne never took her into her confidence—not after the latest pregnancy that ended in a bloody mess. _

_ Cromwell smiles his enigmatic smile and leans forward over the desk. His heavy gold chain catches the light of the flickering candle. No windows in this room. It could be dawn or twilight for all she knows. In this light, there's no telling the real color of his eyes. Then again, she has seen him in broad daylight and she could never quite unravel his eyes. She cannot help but notice the weight and quality of the gold he wears. She wants to quip, Not bad for the son of a drunk innkeeper, eh? But, she minds her tongue and returns his stare with equal audacity._

_ "I believe you know why you are here," he says after a while. His eyes trail down her neck and come to rest where her collar bone meets her throat. The fear coils between her legs and threatens to turn her stomach inside out. Who knows? She might vomit all over the expensive Italian shoes of Thomas Cromwell. Therein lays the danger: she does not know what will happen five minutes from now or five hours from now. Five minutes or five hours is not the point. She does not know what he will do, what he can do in that space of time. She wonders how long Mark Smeaton lasted, five minutes or five hours?_

The crimson velvet pouch arrived on a Monday. Mistakenly, Elizabeth Seymour thought it was for her older sister, Jane, the latest Queen of England. Poor sweet, simple Janey had somehow managed to marry the King of England barely a week before. Elizabeth now found herself chief lady in waiting to her older sister. Which meant she brushed her sister's hair, helped her wash her back, and soothed her anxieties. All in all, Elizabeth did as she had always done for Jane at Wolf Hall. Except now she did so at Whitehall.

"Ooh Lissie, do go see what Master Cromwell's man wants," said Jane. A youth, wearing the livery of Lord Privy Seal Cromwell, entered Queen Jane's presence chamber clutching the gift.

Elizabeth looked up and saw the black clad young man glancing nervously about the queen's ladies, unsure of the utterly female world, unsure of whom to give the gift to.

Elizabeth left her sister and welcomed the stranger into the queen's rooms. She knew Jane had Cromwell to thank for the former queen's quick disposal—whatever his Lutheran sympathies. Whatever her own rough treatment at his hands.

"I can give that to her Majesty," she smiled, holding out her hand for the parcel that was clearly heavy with jewels. Inwardly, Elizabeth checked at the thought that Master Cromwell's wedding gift for her sister was most likely from a dissolved monastery that her family had contributed to. But, she kept her pleasant courtier's smile. The page swallowed hard, and shifted uncomfortably. Discreetly, he touched her elbow and raised his lips closer to her ears.

"It is for her Majesty's sister, Lady Elizabeth."

Jane craned her neck over her ladies' heads in order to meet Elizabeth's eyes. Elizabeth returned her sister's questioning gaze with a shrug. She turned back to Master Cromwell's page.

"To whom do I owe this favor?" she asked. His eyes narrowed, confused.

"Why, Master Cromwell."

"From Master Cromwell, to Lady Elizabeth Seymour?" She repeated. He nodded minutely.

"And is there a letter…a message attached?" she pursued. He shook his head and offered the pouch again. Puzzled, Elizabeth gave up and took the parcel. What was this? _So sorry my Lady Elizabeth for that unpleasantness a few weeks ago? A pretty jewel so you need not worry your pretty head about losing your pretty head because your sister is the Queen of England now?_ Elizabeth smiled at her own private joke.

" You must give the Queen's love to our Master Cromwell." She shared a knowing look with the page and smiled at their mutual embarrassment. He bowed stiffly to her, which she returned with a gracious curtsey.

"Lissie, come back to our game. Help me, Lady Rochford is clobbering me at cards," Jane called over the noise of the queen's room. Elizabeth took her seat next to her sister. A hush fell over the room as the ladies swarmed around Elizabeth to see the cut and quality of whatever was in the velvet pouch. Elizabeth gingerly unfolded the rich fabric. Lady Rochford gasped as the contents came into view: a magnificent choker with long jeweled pendant.

Even Jane's eyes widened—and she had the crown jewels at her disposal. Jane reached out to feel the stones, but Elizabeth folded the velvet over the necklace. Her eyes met Jane's; Jane furrowed her brows in confusion. Suddenly, she stood and said: "Lissie, come unplait my hair and brush it for me."

Sister or no, Elizabeth rose and swept her queen a deep curtsey and followed Jane back to her bedchamber. She practically had to shut the heavy wooden door in Jane Boleyn's nose. Once safely alone, Elizabeth brought the jewels over to the window in order to better to see them in the sunlight. Jane stood behind her, resting her head on her sister's shoulder.

"Definitely diamonds," Jane whispered. Elizabeth narrowed her eyes skeptically.

"You think? Are you sure they are not another gem…look they have an orange glow about them."

Jane reached out to raise the gems up closer to the light. "Yes, diamonds. From India. Diamonds can be colored, you know."

Elizabeth had to admit her sister was probably right; for a simple girl who loved needle-point and prayer, Queen Jane Seymour probably knew a diamond when she saw one.

As Elizabeth brushed Jane's hair in long, absent-minded strokes, they considered the implications. In this court, a gift was never just a gift. Jane, a newly-wed ready to believe the best of everyone, thought it was the beginning of an entreaty for Elizabeth to marry Cromwell's son, Gregory.

Elizabeth, more wary, thought it was an interlude to a bribe. Cromwell's politics were highly adaptable. He needed a woman amongst the Queen's ladies and none of the Howard women would be skipping forward to take his hand any time soon.

"A bribe, that would be shameless, Lissie," Jane said. "Especially handing it off to you in front of me. Shameless," Jane repeated.

"He fought for the French, banked for the Italians. I don't think Master Cromwell knows the meaning of the word 'shameless.'" Elizabeth pointed out. Cardinal Wolsey raised Cromwell up from absolutely nothing, which the younger man repaid the Cardinal with by serving him up on a platter for the King's rage. Sir Thomas More went from a political embarrassment, to a martyr. Maybe Cromwell grieved for the better man, maybe he did not. In any case, Cromwell had no trouble slipping on the robes and seal of the Chancellor. If any one asked Elizabeth—which no did--Cromwell and Anne Boleyn were too much alike for their own good: upstart Reformists, with ambition that outstripped their rank. If he could not stay loyal to a kindred spirit like Anne Boleyn, then God help Jane Seymour. He may have turned on the Boleyns, but he was no friend to the Seymours' Papist sympathies either. Then again, Jane, unlike Elizabeth, knew when to keep her mouth shut and swallow her anger.

"Do you think Edward or Tom knows about this?" Elizabeth asked.

"Our brothers know everything in this court. But if they had some sort of deal with Cromwell, we would know." Jane had a point. It was difficult to imagine the fair-haired, fair-born Seymour brothers bartering with dark, low-born Cromwell like Venetian merchants. Such an uncomfortable alliance would only come about after a family meeting in which each Seymour child was briefed on her role.

_ "Have you seen Lord Rochford in the Queen's rooms often?" Cromwell begins preliminarily. She thinks this is a silly, simple question—but she senses the devil is in the seeming forwardness of the question._

_ "Well, of course. He is her Majesty's brother after all," she replies with a bit of laughter. One look from Cromwell silences her. This is no laughing matter._

_ "Have you seen Lord Rochford kiss the Queen?" he pursues._

_ "With familial affection…but…I am sorry Master Secretary, what is this all about?"_

_ "Have you seen Lord Rochford and the Queen kiss, with their tongues in each others' mouth?" Cromwell marches on, relentless._

_ At this, Elizabeth cannot help but snort with surprise. "If I had a base sense of humor, I might laugh." Gravity has shifted; the shocking accusation of incest, the fact that Cromwell can level it with a straight face, tells Elizabeth that nothing will be the same in this country ever again._

_ Cromwell narrows his eyes and sets his jaw. "Am I laughing, Lady Elizabeth? Have you ever known me to jest before? I let Will Somers play the Fool."_

_ "No," she says._

_ "No? No, what?" _

_ "No, that's ridiculous. Yes, there are always men coming and going from the Queen's chambers. But young men like to pay court to a pretty queen. Her brother is her brother." She wonders if this is why her brothers took Jane back to Wolf Hall, but left her here. Did Edward not want to arouse even more suspicion by removing both Seymour girls? Does Jane know what is transpiring here?_

_ He tilts his head, how he registers sympathy, contemplation, contempt…he will kill you with a lop-side smile and the sensitive incline of his head. _


	2. Chapter 2

Elizabeth waited until she'd laced her sister into a riding habit and waved good-bye as Jane and the other ladies rode out with the king. Elizabeth pled a headache and asked to be excused. With the king and other nobles like Suffolk away, she had a chance of catching Cromwell alone at his desk.

"Lissie, whatever you do…do not do it without speaking with Edward," Jane told her softly but firmly. Lately, it seemed neither of them could do anything without speaking to Edward.

Strange to live by another's leave again, Elizabeth thought as she went back into the palace. Until a few years ago, she had been living at her husband's estates in the North. Too cold and desolate to do anything else, except sit by the fire and read or paint. Her husband had been too old to do much else other than occasionally pinch her cheek or grope her breast. He had been so old that he'd survived his own heirs; when she inherited his lands and wealth, she dismissed the pinching and the groping as a small tithe on a very large gain. Even with her return to court and Queen Anne's service, she had something the other ladies did not: something of her very own. She held lands and earned income in her own right. Edward could not hold that over her head, at least.

So when Elizabeth strode purposefully towards Cromwell's office, she could not help but feel the seductive tug of youthful rebellion. Disobedience for its own sake. Edward and Jane were always speaking softly, minding the rules—while she and Tom hurtled themselves towards mischief and the ensuing sharp cracks on their rumps. Which was likely why her father had married her off to some old Northern lord. Elizabeth taught herself to read Latin and French in that damp castle, but it never occurred to her to instruct herself on submissiveness.

As she neared his offices, she became self-conscious of the click of her jeweled heels on the wood paneled floors. When was the last time a woman was even down here? Certainly not since Cromwell's men had marched Anne's ladies in to be interrogated. Even before she reached the rooms themselves, she could hear the scratch of quill against paper and discreet, clerical murmuring. She caught bits and pieces of the conversation. Oh, no we must check the statute again. Yes, I am quite sure it has been amended since last Parliament. No? Well we ought to change it anyhow.

Dozens of young men, indistinguishable in a sea of black jackets and white linen, scribbled frantically. They only looked up to consult a book every now and then. The place smelled of wood, ink, and vellum. In truth, the placed reminded her of the now dissolved abbeys and monasteries where monks silently transcribed holy words.

The mortified young man who had brought her necklace in the first place was also the first to notice her. He glanced up, as if sensing something was not quite as it should be. Perhaps the smell of rosewater alerted him. At the sight of her, the poor boy flushed so deeply his skin looked hot to the touch. Elizabeth raised her eyebrows and motioned her head to the end of the long corridor where Cromwell himself sat.

He tried to get out of his seat as quietly as he could, but the sound of his chair against the wood caused all the other clerks to look simultaneously and see her. Any remaining pretense of keeping her visit quiet flew out the window as all the clerks stood and swept her the bow given to a sister of the Queen of England. Small chance now of keeping Edward out of this. Whatever _this _was.

Elizabeth walked quickly past all the bowed heads and doffed caps. By the time she made her way to Cromwell's own desk, he had managed to bury his head in a letter and studiously ignore her. The two clerks that personally assisted him glanced at one another, gulping and panicking. She stood there flushed, watching Cromwell make a spectacle of ignoring her. Finally, one of them found the bullocks to announce her.

"Her Majesty's sister, Lady Elizabeth Seymour."

Cromwell did one of his characteristic double-takes: one short glance, then a longer one—as if he would like you to believe that he himself cannot really believe that you have honored him with your presence.

"Ah, my Lady Elizabeth. To what do I owe this unexpected pleasure?" he purred. He stood to offer her a chair. Elizabeth wondered if he too remembered what happened the last time Thomas Cromwell offered her a chair. Still, she sat and gingerly spread her skirts, thanked him prettily for the glass of wine he put in her hands. He shared a look with his clerks, then motioned for them to leave.

Alone again, Elizabeth thought. She drained her wine. It gave her a little recklessness. She produced the velvet wrapping that contained the necklace and placed it on the table between them.

"Is this a bribe?" she asked baldly. He had his implacable smile in place, totally unruffled. His eyes shut briefly as he chuckled.

"I had hoped you would think better of me, my lady," he answered without really answering. Sighing, he relented. "I also thought that given my suit for your hand, the sentiment behind the necklace was perfectly obvious. Tell, me honestly, do you like it?"

For a moment, Elizabeth was sure she had forgotten how to breathe. Marriage? Her marry him? Surely this time he overreached himself? Henry could not, would not permit this? Handsome Charles Brandon almost had to make do without his handsome head because he had married the king's sister. Her mouth tried to form words, but she could put no sound to them.

Finally, he rescued her from her flailing. "His Majesty agreed. Your father, your brothers did not inform you?" He leaned back against his great chair. "Well, no matter. I think it is better for a woman to settle these things on her own account, anyway. See how alike we are already? No peacocking around in courtly love for us."

No, Master Secretary, she thought, We are nothing alike. Instead, she replied, "Master Secretary I cannot accept this gift." Still reeling from shock, she inadvertently looked directly into his eyes. But something about their intensity—the pale blue of the irises blazing against the large black pupils—made her look down again. She pushed the pouch towards him.

"Of course you can accept it." He inhaled deeply and his voice softened. "In fact, it would give me great pleasure to see you wear it. Accepting a gift does not end with two people kneeling at an altar." He pushed the pouch back to her.

She blinked rapidly and shoved the jewel towards him forcefully. That slow boiling panic and dread that she felt before, when she realized too late what a dangerous man he was. She could not marry him, not a man like that, a man capable of anything. She could not lay down next to a man she feared and call it matrimony.

"Master Cromwell, I cannot marry you," she said softly.

He waved his hand dismissively. "My lady, you have barely even considered it. Must I have the king himself recommend me to you?"

"I do not know you, sir," she swallowed. Sweat trickled down her neck, and as it evaporated, she shivered.

"Perhaps we had a bad beginning," he conceded. She thought, Yes, a bad start was made when you slammed my face onto the desk. A poor beginning, even for the son of a Putney smithee.

Undeterred, Cromwell continued, " But, over time a familial affection develops—"

"That's not what I mean," she cut in. At the interruption, his mask fell. He leaned forward, and the chair creaked menacingly. She swore her heart faltered for a beat or two. She had just interrupted Master Cromwell, the second most powerful man in England. Her fingers went numb with cold, but her cheeks felt ablaze.

"What I mean to say is," she said slowly, "is that I do not know what kind of man you are. Some say you are the son of a brewer, others a blacksmith. I hear you were a mercenary in the French army—and then I hear you were a banker, a lawyer. Master Cromwell, you are everywhere at court, always there, always watching. But, I know no more of you than my first day at court. I do not know who you are, and that is why I cannot marry you." Well, partially true. She did not want to have to come out and say the obvious: I am afraid of you. I am afraid you will be a cruel husband.

She peered up at him. He had shifted in his chair, chin leaning on his right palm, while his eyes fixed on something in the distance. He did not blink. He did not speak.

"I'm very sorry Master Cromwell." She folded her hands in her lap, and bent her head. Elizabeth breathed in deeply and counted backwards from ten. Yet, still he said nothing. As the silence stretched into discomfort, she dared to rise without being invited to do so. She backed away slowly, as if she'd stumbled across a sleeping bear in the woods.

"Lady Elizabeth."

She froze in her tracks and stared dumbly ahead. He did not look up.

"I am glad to see a Papist family like yours embrace the Reformation. There are rumors, gossip, that her Majesty will resurrect the Catholic Church. Treasonous slander—I try to stamp it out where I can. But, I would hate to see anymore come of it. You wouldn't either, would you?"

Elizabeth shook her head swiftly and bobbed a tight curtsey.

_"I do not know what to make of your intransigence, Lady Elizabeth. We are both here to help your sister, and protect His Majesty." He bends down and leans in like a lover coming in for a kiss. "Unless, the Queen involved you in her harem? Is that why you do not want to speak against her? Did you offer up your cunny?"_

_ On reflex, Elizabeth's hand flies out and slaps him hard across the cheek. The crack echoes throughout the room._

_ "How dare you? You filthy son of a brewer." She draws back her hand again, but he quickly grabs it, yanking her out of her chair. She yelps at the pain that shoots through her shoulder and gasps in surprise when he kicks her feet out from under her. He twists one arm behind her while pulling her to her feet. Desperately, her feet try to find the floor themselves. But, he shoves her forward so that her stomacher smashes against the desk. He pins her arm while grabbing a hold of her hair with the other hand. Her small feet—that have by now lost their shoes—scramble to kick behind her. The soldier in him roughly shoves his knee in between her legs so that she cannot kick at his knees or groin. _

_ Yanking her hair, he slams her face down on to the desk. "You do something like that again, and I will name you as one of her accomplices. I don't need you to make your sister a queen," he hisses. He pulls her hair up and slams her face into the wood again. _

"_God help me if it continues to go badly with you," he warns her. He shifts his weight off of her, standing up to straighten out his robes and gold chain. She lays belly down on the table, dazed. After a few moments, she collects herself and returns to her seat. She hears a faint ringing in her ears, and reaches up—almost incredulously to feel the warm blood flowing from her nose._

_ He dabs his forehead with his kerchief and then tosses it across to her. Gratefully, she presses it to her nose._

_ "So tell me, was the male company that the Queen kept…troubling to you? Wanton, even?"_

_ "Yes, yes I suppose you could call it wanton," Elizabeth says distantly. She is distracted. She runs her tongue over her teeth to make sure none have been knocked loose or out. _


	3. Chapter 3

Later, as Elizabeth heard the clatter of hooves down below in the courtyard, accompanied with the laughter of women, she made a bet with herself. 15 schillings said that Edward would be the first to slap her upside the head, and call her a useless nit-wit for being rash about Cromwell. 10 schillings said that Tom would be the one to yank her by the ear and tell her she was stupid jade for not waiting for her brothers to do the talking.

She wanted to appear industrious when everyone returned to the queen's rooms, so she spread a blank square of linen over her lap and began to sketch out a pattern for her embroidery needle to follow. She heard the sound the ladies' clicking heels near, along with the heavier foot-steps of men. When the door flung open, she had the grace to look pleasantly surprised when her brothers strode in, one on each arm of Jane. Her sister walked past without looking down.

"Come help me out of my riding habit, Lady Elizabeth," Jane said coolly. Elizabeth stood and curtseyed behind her sister's skirts. Together all four of them went into Jane's bedchamber. Strange, Elizabeth thought. Just about a month ago, we put Lord Rochford on the block for following his sister into her bedchamber. Now, Queen Jane went to her private rooms with a brother on each arm.

With the door securely shut behind them, Edward, and then Tom, in quick succession both whacked her hard upside the head.

"You little fool!" snapped Edward.

"Even I would have had the sense not to do that, and I'm senseless," said Tom. For good measure, her handsome brother slipped her a wink. Well, at least all was forgiven with Tom.

Not so with Edward. He angrily flung his leather riding gloves against the wall and smoothed his hands over his new beard.

"Oh…so you both knew about…" Elizabeth began. Edward kicked at a chest.

"No. No we did not know until His Majesty said, 'Oh my lord, what a lovely day for a ride. Oh, by the way, Master Cromwell would like to marry Lady Elizabeth—is that not grand? Oh I shall make him Lord Cromwell—isn't it time I did so?'" Edward paused in his story to pace back and forth.

"Well, it was not quite like that," Tom added unhelpfully. "In fact, it was far worse. The King spoke nothing except of how well Cromwell had served him, how he got rid of the great whore, how he freed the King from the shackles of Rome. Said to us—Charles Brandon there too—about how Thomas Cromwell had the sharpest mind in the kingdom. And how he was looking to marry again, and the King was beyond pleased that his choice had fallen on the Queen's sister, Lady Elizabeth." Tom poured Edward a deep glass of wine.

"Oh, to your credit Lissie, the King said you had a quick wit—which is why he thought it such a brilliant match." Edward raised his glass in mock salute.

"Cromwell had the gall to tell the king who he was going to marry?" Elizabeth gasped. No one could marry that close to throne and expect to keep his head.

"His Majesty told me that he could not help but notice how Master Cromwell kept watching you dance last night," Jane said.

Tom rolled his eyes. "Brilliant. Bloody brilliant. Cromwell puts on a performance, gazing at you in front of the king. When has Cromwell ever been an open book? Never. That weasel knew exactly what he was doing when he allowed His Majesty to catch him looking at you. So, then the king—deeply in love with his beautiful, virtuous queen…" . Jane smiled back at Tom and batted her eye-lashes good naturedly. Tom continued, "The king, in love with his queen, proposes the match first. And also declares that he will make Master Cromwell, Lord Cromwell."

Edward shook his head and rubbed his eyes. "Masterful stroke on Cromwell's part. I will be the first to admit."

Elizabeth looked across to Jane pleadingly. Her sister sighed.

"Lissie, believe me I tried," Jane said. "I tried to persuade His Majesty, tried to convince him you had your eye on a young man at court. I even tried to tell His Majesty that perhaps you and Master Cromwell's son, Gregory, would make a better match. But this morning the king told me, 'Jane, I already promised him—from one lovesick man to another.'"

Tom snickered, and Jane shot him a reprimanding glance. "What?" he asked. "Using Cromwell and love-sick in the same sentence? That's comedy."

"Well, an eventful day—and it's not even dinner," Elizabeth observed.

"The only thing more eventful then our ride out with the king appears to have been events occurring at the palace while we were away." Edward fixed his gaze on Elizabeth. Her stomach rose up in her belly. How could Edward know already that she had gone to see Cromwell herself? She highly doubted one of Cromwell's pages or clerks rode out to tell the court that the queen's sister had just jilted the king's first minister. All his servants were notoriously discreet—quite possibly the only discreet servants at court.

"Well, Lady Elizabeth, we returned to the palace thinking, 'how will we break the unhappy news to our little Lissie?' But, lo and behold as I walk through the presence chamber, I cannot help but overhear two of Cromwell's clerks murmur back and forth to each other, 'Oh for certain, the queen's own sister came to see Master Cromwell herself,'" Edwards voice sharpened as he went in for the kill. "So, little Lissie, what did you say to the soon-to-be Lord Cromwell?"

"I said no. But, politely. With reverence…and awe," Elizabeth replied. Tom stifled a laugh. "Well, I did not really think the king would allow it. Allow the son of blacksmith to marry the aunt of the future king of England?"

Tom shook his head. He knew her too well. "But, that is not what you told our love-sick Cromwell, is it?"

"Lissie, what happened? What did you say?" Jane demanded. Jane never demanded, and Elizabeth realized that for all the jests she and Tom might make, the situation was precarious.

"I told him I could not marry him because I did not know what sort of man he was," she admitted. Jane fell back against her chair. Elizabeth looked desperately between the shocked faces of her siblings.

"I cannot marry him. I cannot marry someone I am afraid of. And I am afraid of a man like that. He loves nothing, respects nothing. And if nothing is sacred to someone, then he can do anything. He cannot be trusted—"

"No! No he cannot be trusted!" Edward snapped. "Which is exactly why we needed you. At least if you had Cromwell's brat in your belly he _might, might _have the decency not to move against us—and make no mistake, he knows our sympathies for the Old Religion."

"Lissie," Tom said quietly "his spies are everywhere and know everything. But what do we have? We have Jane. And we need to protect her at all costs. We cannot protect Jane when His Majesty can tell his secretary to go ahead and marry the queen's sister—and we here are the last to know of it."

"His Majesty calls Master Cromwell his most loyal subject. If it ever reduces to my word against Master Cromwell's…"Jane's voice trailed off. "Mary, Mother of God save me." At that, they all crossed themselves. Jane stood and smoothed her skirts. "I think we have given our Lissie enough to think about for one afternoon. Edward, Tom—do go find his Majesty and ask if he will dine with me tonight in my rooms?"

Both brothers bowed and left their sisters.

"Let me help you out of habit. Would you like to wash in a bit of lavender water?" Elizabeth asked by way of making a peace offering. Jane nodded, and remained silent as Elizabeth unlaced the gown.

"Jane, there's something else. Something I did not tell Tom and Edward. Please do not be any more upset with me than you already are. But, as I left, Cromwell said it was rumored you would try to restore the old faith…and he would hate for any more to come of it. I am sorry I was rash, but I was rash because I was scared."

"I'm frightened of him too, Lissie," Jane said after a while. "I know that no one here thinks much of my intellect. But, I am not such a fool that I do not realize that he could undo us all just as quickly as the wind changes. Remember when he was so suddenly generous, giving me his own apartments next to His Majesty's? I thought to myself, here is a man that knows when the wind changes—and changes with it."

Jane turned around. "Lissie, I am not asking you as my chief lady-in-waiting, I am asking you as my sister: help me," she said, widening her eyes. "Lissie, you might be our only chance to anchor the changeable Master Cromwell. Help me," Jane repeated.

Elizabeth put her hands on Jane's shoulders. "You really want a man like Thomas Cromwell to be uncle to your future Prince of Wales? Can you possibly want his children to be cousins to the next king?"

Jane removed her hands. "Well I don't want a jilted, festering Master Cromwell, either. And there is no Prince of Wales on the near horizon—trust me, I know."

_The bleeding has stopped, but now her face throbs in places where bruises will appear tomorrow. She wonders if it is past midnight, wonders if her brothers are at all concerned that she has arrived today—well yesterday—as she was supposed to. Still, she cannot tell Cromwell what he wants to hear: that Queen Anne seduced her own brother. Over the hours, she has steadily admitted that hot-blooded Anne Boleyn probably had lovers, that Anne's maidenhead belonged to Thomas Wyatt, and not the king. She can say that with total honesty, all malice aside .But she cannot even dignify Cromwell's obscene accusations of incest with an acknowledgement. So, the obscene accusation has turned into an obscene stand-off. _

_He tilts his head in thought. He sizes her up. An abacus in his mind clicks away as he tries to square her with the equation. In his mind, she does not add up. The other ladies left this room babbling, tear-streaked, but otherwise convinced of the truth of their evidence. Rochford's wife was actually half-pleased at the unnatural acts between her husband and his sister._

_ Now, Jane Seymour's own sister suddenly takes it upon herself to mount a defense. All of her sister's blonde haired, blue-eyed prettiness—but none of the mildness. In fact, she is prettier than her older sister. Bigger eyes, fuller lips, and rosier cheeks. For a moment, he wonders why Henry did not pursue Elizabeth. God knows, he would have. But, Elizabeth's sharp slap reminded him why Henry chose her older sister: little Lissie here would have been another Anne Boleyn, just blonde. And Catholic._

_ "Oh, just be done with it," Elizabeth says. He looks up, a questioning look. "Just send her to an abbey. Send her back to France. Just be done with the awful business. Let her be. Let's crown my sister and be done with this…production."_

_ "Well, there is the process of the law to consider," he starts to explain._

_ " 'Is the law not that which pleases the King?'" Elizabeth answers Cromwell with his own words. Thomas Wyatt had told her that while they danced one night. Wyatt said, 'Lissie tell me, is still England?'. _

_ Cromwell's face spreads into an uncontrollable grin. "Well, Lady Elizabeth, I underrated you. Seems you understand a great deal about the times we find ourselves in." _

_ "You really want to be rid of her. Is it you, are you the one that wants her dead?" _

_ He keeps on smiling his lethal smile. "It's late. I think we have wrestled with the truth enough for one night. Let's send you down to Chelsea, where your sister is."_

_ Elizabeth hesitates. "Chelsea? I thought Jane was at Wolf Hall?"_

_ "It would appear his Majesty wanted her even closer."_

_ Elizabeth thinks, Cromwell and his king want to crown Jane while her predecessor is barely cold in the ground._

_ She says: "Chelsea? You mean Sir Thomas More's home. That particular Chelsea?"_

_ He raises his eyebrows, amused at her astuteness. "Your memory eclipses mine."_

_ "The next queen of England is asleep in Thomas More's former home. Well, it certainly is the 'times we find ourselves in'" she replies. He shrugs slightly. She puts her hands flat on the desk to steady herself as she rises. The blood rushes from her head to her feet, unsteadying her. Cromwell makes no attempt to get up. Instead, he reaches into the folds of his robes and produces a neatly folded letter bearing the royal seal._

_ "You will need this in order to leave the palace. No one leaves without the King's permission." He holds it out to the side. If she wants that piece of paper, she will have to come to him to get it. She edges towards him slowly, not wanting to be caught unawares again and slammed up against cold, unyielding wood. For his part in the dance, he holds her gaze steadily. _

_ She finds herself within striking distance. Timidly, she reaches out for that small, unassuming piece of paper that will deliver her from this nightmare. Elizabeth's fingers reach out and graze his as she takes her passage from his loose grip. Cromwell knots his fingers through hers and pulls her close to him. _

_ "I have thrown down a cardinal, a saint, and two queens. Do not think that I cannot do the same for you and yours," he says. His tone is as mild as if he were quoting her the latest exchange rates in Antwerp. He pulls her a little closer. "Don't ever obstruct me in my business again."_

Well past midnight, after the dancing, after the informal deals made over a glass of wine, Cromwell finally found himself completely alone in his rooms. He sat beside the fireplace and pulled his furs tightly around him, even though it was late spring. He held up the unwanted diamond necklace so that it would catch the light of the fire and refract the flames like a burst of gunpowder.

With his eyes closed, he ran the necklace through his fingers like a rosary. He had hoped to see her wearing this tonight. But, she wanted no part of that. She wanted nothing from him on her skin. The thought made his throat seize up with bile and rejection. Groaning, he wondered if he would have done better to just take her while he had the chance. While he had her shoved face down, arms pinned. Should have hiked her skirts over her hips, rammed his cock in her, and rode her as hard as he could. Should have gotten a child on her right then there. Let her come to him with a bastard in her belly, and then see if she still thought herself too far above him to wear that necklace.

He gripped the jewels tightly and thought, Lissie, one day you will be my wife, and I will see you wear this necklace on our wedding night, and nothing else.


	4. Chapter 4

The next afternoon, Elizabeth stood in the king's official presence chamber with her brothers. All the courtiers' eyes were trained on the throne of England and Master Cromwell. She took care to stand next to Tom instead of Edward.

"I wonder what Father makes of all this," Tom remarked. Edward turned his head and narrowed his eyes.

"You know, Tom," Edward said slowly "I find I don't much care what Father makes of anything." Tom looked down, quite interested in his boots. It was a terribly kept secret that Sir John Seymour had been caught in the throes of passion with Edward's first wife. Although Edward had remarried, relations remained understandably strained between father and son. Actually, Elizabeth knew before anyone else; she once saw father and daughter-in-law locked in a half naked embrace. That was the same day that Elizabeth decided that perhaps marriage to a decrepit Northern lord might not be such a bad idea after all; her marriage prospects would be ruined once the scandal got out.

The king instructed Cromwell to kneel, and Cromwell obeyed. Inwardly, Elizabeth thought of her sister: she who stoops to conquer. Bound to serve and obey. Maybe her sister and Cromwell knew something she did not about getting ahead in the world. Precariously, Henry rested his ceremonial sword on Cromwell's shoulder. Tom nudged her in the ribs.

"It would be a pity if the king accidentally sneezed right now," he whispered. Elizabeth bit the inside of her cheeks to keep from giggling.

"I create you Sir Thomas Cromwell, Baron Cromwell of Wimbeldon, and Lord Privy Seal." Henry's strong voice rang throughout the presence chamber. Elizabeth stole a glance at Charles Brandon, who as the senior nobleman at court, stood beside the king. The duke pressed his lips tightly together and closed his eyes momentarily. She supposed he maybe thought the same thing she did: the king of England now makes the son of a drunken innkeeper into a peer, and nothing can ever be the same in this country.

"Arise Lord Cromwell," Henry instructed.

Cromwell stood and turned to face the court. Far from wearing his typical smugness, he actually appeared bewildered and a little bit embarrassed at all the attention focused on him. He was the most private man at court. No one had met his son. No one knew if he kept a mistress.

As he passed, the court bowed before the Lord Cromwell. He swept past Elizabeth and her brothers without even a glance. In his wake, Elizabeth caught the faint smell of cloves and sandalwood.

_By the time she staggers from the boat and up the launch to Sir Thomas More's former home, the night is at its darkest and coldest. A waiting guard helps her up the dark path towards the pretty country home. She keeps her hood drawn over her head so she does not have to answer his questions about what in the world happened to her face. _

_ "Just take me to see Tom," was all she said to the guard. _

_ He leads her into the main hall, where Tom sits before a small fire. He is playing himself at chess. _

_ She stands for a moment, collecting herself. Then she says, "I hope you are winning." Tom looks up, smiling at the sound of her voice. But, the smile vanishes when he sees her face and disheveled hair._

_ "Jesus, Mary, and Joseph," he whispers. "What in the love of Christ happened to you?" He crosses to room in two strides and leads her to sit in the chair nearest the fire. He pours her two goblets: one with water, one with brandy. Tom hands one then the other to Elizabeth, supervising as she takes a sip out of each one intermittently. _

_ "Where have you been? What happened, Lissie?" He takes a kerchief from his doublet and soakes it with the cool water. Gently, he presses the linen to her nose. "Hold that there. Keep a wet, cold rag on it to keep the bruising down. Did you get into a tavern brawl on the way over here?"_

_ Elizabeth holds her hand up to halt his questions. She places her hand over Tom's._

_ "Oh, don't fuss. I can manage this," she says. "And to answer your question, it was a bit of a brawl."_

_ Tom stands back, impressed. "My beautiful little sister, who loves painting and reading, in her first brawl. Our mother is looking down from Heaven as we speak."_

_ "Don't make me smile, Tom. It hurts to smile or laugh."_

_ "Really, what happened?"_

_ "I picked a quarrel with Master Secretary Cromwell," she says simply and dabs at her nose. _

_ "Well, I can tell who won, judging from the looks of you."_

_ "Judicially speaking, I suppose I struck first."_

_ "You would, wouldn't you?" Tom refills her water and brandy. "What the Hell is going on at Greenwich? What were they asking you all?"_

_ "Queens, lovers, unnatural unions. You know, the poetry of courtly love," Elizabeth replies. "I think Master Cromwell may prove to be a false friend…or maybe a bloody nose is a common way of saying hello for Putney blacksmiths."_

_ Tom nods, taking note of the edge in her voice, even as she tries to make a jest. "What did the fair-weather Cromwell have to say?"_

_ "Nothing good. Told me he had thrown down a cardinal, a saint, and two queens." Elizabeth counts off the litany of Cromwell's fallen friends on her fingers. "And that he could do the same for us."_

_ Tom snorts with a burst of a dark laughter. "I think we would do better to keep him as an enemy than a friend."_

As the courtiers filed out, Henry waved Elizabeth over to him. He waited until everyone who was not a servant or clerk had left. He glared at her, and inwardly Elizabeth groaned at the ridiculous turn of events. She could not help but think that everyone would be all the better if Cromwell just married an old, rich dowager and left the Seymours out of it.

"Lady Elizabeth, are you out of your senses?"

She bowed her head and dropped to the floor in a deep curtsy. "Your Majesty, I have already married once to please my family."

"Yes. And now you will marry to please your king. My blessing is also my command," Henry said impatiently. He beckoned a page over who presented the unfortunate crimson velvet pouch. "I thought you might want this back."

Elizabeth hesitated and swallowed hard. Henry rolled his eyes.

"My lady, I command you to wear this," he growled.

Resigned, Elizabeth took the pouch. She fumbled with the latch on the necklace until Henry rose from his throne. Roughly, he pushed her strawberry blonde hair out of the way and fastened the necklace. His fingers lay on the nape of her neck for a moment longer than Elizabeth would have liked. He stepped back and turned her to face him. He cupped her cheek and looked her straight in the eyes.

"I do believe Lord Cromwell would marry you if you were just a seamstress." He put his lips to her ear and said, "I know I would." Then, as if remembering himself, he stepped away from her.

"Lady Elizabeth Seymour, in less than a fortnight you will be Lady Elizabeth Cromwell. It is settled. Do not think to stop it. You are going to marry one of my richest, most loyal subjects. Not all eyes will weep for you. Mine certainly won't." Henry pinched her rump. "Now go in to dine with the rest of the court."

As Elizabeth went towards the great hall, her eyes brimmed with hot, angry tears. The choker, true to its name, rested so tightly around her neck that she was sure it would strangle her. The large pendant, which dropped from the choker in a "Y" shape, came to rest just above the start of her cleavage. Uncomfortably intimate.

If not for Henry's temper, she would have liked nothing more than to rip it off her neck, sending the gems flying in every direction like fireworks. Instead, she picked up a glass of wine as she entered the great hall. She drained it in two gulps. Walking forward, she placed the glass on a tray and picked up another full glass. Although the dancing and feasting was a bit more subdued under Queen Jane, something made this night. Perhaps the warm springtime evening, or the strong wine, or the fact that a man of such low birth had just been made a lord. In any event, the evening felt a little daring, a little reckless.

For her part, Elizabeth ate too much and drank even more. She flirted with rakish Sir Francis Bryan and laughed at his bawdy jokes. She gossiped shamelessly with the Duchess of Suffolk, delighting in making Catherine hide her giggles behind her hand. Even the musician felt the shift in the air and struck up a scandalous la volta. Thoroughly drunk, Elizabeth made her way back to Sir Francis.

"Sir Francis, I know you have only one eye, but can you not see a girl in need of a dance?" she teased. He winked with his one eye and offered her his arm.

"My lady, who am I to deny the queen's own sister?"

He led her out among the dancers, and at the right bar of music, Sir Francis took her in his arms and lifted her. As he twirled her, she spotted Cromwell out of the corner of her eye—huddled in conspiracy with Richard Rich. Master Rich was speaking, but Elizabeth watched Cromwell watching her. As Sir Francis spun her in the air, she threw back her head and laughed. When he put her down, she glanced over to see if Cromwell had noticed. Indeed, he stormed off, leaving Rich mid-sentence. Bewildered, Rich looked around and spotted Francis Bryan with his hands on Elizabeth's waist. He narrowed his eyes at Sir Francis, who retaliated with a lewd tongue gesture.

"You are playing a dangerous fucking game, woman," Sir Francis warned. He picked her up again.

"Mind your language, my lord."

"We are two shameless creatures," he chuckled.

"Why?" she asked sweetly. "For dancing la volta? Or for dancing la volta to spite Lord Cromwell and to make Lady Ursula Misseldon jealous?"

_Elizabeth slips beneath the cool bed sheets. In the darkness, her feet reach out to find her older sister's familiar warmth; they have been bedmates for most of their lives. Murmuring, Jane allows Elizabeth to warm her cold toes against Jane's warm feet. Exhausted, Elizabeth curls herself around her sister's half-asleep form. She breaths in the sweet smell of Jane's hair and feels safe for the first time in over a day._

_ "Lissie…what happened…we were so worried," Jane mumbled._

_ "Oh, you know me. Always complicating everything." This is not a particularly cold night, but Elizabeth still cannot get warm, and holds Jane tighter. _

_ "What is happening at Greenwich? Why did the king make me leave?"_

_ "Because he loves you, wants to protect you."_

_ "But, what is happening there?"_

_ Elizabeth smoothes her sister's hair. After a while, she replies, "Believe me, you do not want to know."_

As two single women, Elizabeth and Ursula shared a bedchamber in the queen's rooms. Originally, Elizabeth was supposed to share with Jane Boleyn, as she was the second most senior lady-in-waiting. Politely, Elizabeth had informed her sister that if she had to share a bed with Jane Boleyn, she would smother Lady Rochford with a pillow.

Fortunately, Elizabeth and Ursula had become fast friends. Elizabeth appreciated her guilelessness, and in return Ursula liked the younger woman's forthrightness. And her stubborn folly. Ursula had smuggled a small amount of brandy out of the dining hall. Now, they sat on their bed, drinking out of the bottle like a couple of sailors on leave.

"So, you said 'no' to Sir Francis?" Elizabeth asked. She took a sip and passed the bottle to Ursula.

"I did not say yes, and I did not say no," Ursula replied.

"If only I had thought of ambivalence in my response to Lord Cromwell," Elizabeth mused. "And you had the good sense to keep the necklace. If I had known that a necklace could turn into a pawn in some dark, twisty game of courtship, I would have just kept it in the first place. Because, apparently that necklace has now become a matter of state."

Ursula laughed and pulled the coverlets over her long shapely legs. Unconsciously, her fingers traced the emeralds on the magnificent necklace that Sir Francis had given her.

"Well, at least your jewels were meant to be a betrothal gift. These emeralds were to ask me if I would be his whore," Ursula smiled. She put the brandy on the small table on her side of the bed.

Sinking down under the covers, Elizabeth asked, "Do you think I carried things too far tonight? Sometimes, I don't know why I do what I do. I just felt so angry at him using the king to back me into a corner. I wanted to make Cromwell angry. I wanted to see how far I could push him."

"In that case I believe you have succeeded. But you cannot keep fighting things. We women must marry where we are told." Ursula blew out the candle and turned over on her side.

"I wish it weren't so."

"That's just the way of it. The dance we must do. Besides, if things become really terrible, I am sure Lord Cromwell can secure you a divorce. I hear he's good at that."

In spite of herself, Elizabeth burst out laughing into the darkness.

Late that night, Cromwell was still fuming over the spectacle Elizabeth put on with Sir Francis: the second time that Elizabeth had broke his heart in as many days. Literally, broke it. Oh, she'd descended from her pedestal to wear his gift. But, then she wore it while she danced and drank with other men. He remembered Sir Francis's hands all over her. The memory was enough to make him want to gouge out the man's remaining eye. And possibly drown her in the Thames while he was at it.

Such a pain burned in his heart, that he wondered if it would flounder. He stared at a pile of letters and bills on his desk, and then pushed them to one side. He sucked in his breath sharply as he realized he'd been holding his breath. So, this was what the poets had been writing about for centuries.

He'd never been in love.

Of course he loved his first wife, another Elizabeth. Bess had been his friend, his confidante, the mother of his children. But, lust, love, resentment, and desperation had never coalesced into something as volatile as this. He missed the companionship of Bess, the stability. He wanted that again with Lissie. The only problem was that he also wanted Lissie naked and glistening with sweat beneath him, whimpering his name.

Still too angry to get any sort of work done, he called for his bath instead, thinking it might calm him. He sank beneath the hot water scented with rosemary and mint. He submerged himself until he could hold his breath no longer and burst through the surface. Smoothing his wet hair back, he thought, I am truly a man reborn. Drunk Walter's son was no longer the bloodied, bruised lad hiding in a cupboard because he was terrified of his father's fists and belt. Any remaining traces of that boy disappeared when the king made him a lord who would marry the queen's sister.

He leaned back and wondered which was better: to have the king of England pat him and say, "I'm very pleased with you, Tom." Or, to have Elizabeth Seymour bow deeply and call him "my lord." On second thought, he would not mind pretty Lissie whispering, "Tom," in the middle of the night, either. Sitting up, he set to work trying to scrub the ink out of his hands. With a coarse piece of linen and good soap that had actual cloves in it for fragrance, he vigorously tried to clean the ink that had seeped into the cracks of his hands. How odd, he thought, that ink was so much more difficult to get out than blood.


	5. Chapter 5

Elizabeth straightened the stiff lace collar on Jane. Diligently, she stepped back just to make sure Jane's ruby diadem rested properly on her honey colored hair.

"How do I look?" Jane asked, unsure of herself. Elizabeth's chest welled with pride.

"You look like a queen," she said. Jane smiled as if to thank her sister for a compliment that she herself did not quite believe.

The queen's rooms were in something of a frenzy after the king had strongly implied he might surprise Jane with a visit from Eustace Chapuys, ambassador to Emperor Charles V. Chapuys had time and again had proved himself a true friend to lost causes, such as the late Dowager Princess Katherine, and her daughter, Lady Mary.

Best that it was Chapuys as the first ambassador Jane received. Chapuys set a diplomatic standard unto himself: always a gracious bow and a slight smile, no matter the hostility of his company. Possibly the most elegant and graceful man at court. Elizabeth thought that if she was meant to marry a man twice her age, then Chapuys was the sort of man for the job. In her confessions, she had had to admit that Chapuys had played Lancelot to her Guinevere in her dreams at night. Now, all she could look forward to Cromwell's hand creeping up her shift at night.

Last night, as Elizabeth tossed and turned, she vacillated between telling Cromwell the truth—that her first marriage had never been consummated—and letting the groom figure it out for himself. Over the last several years, ability to consummate a marriage had gone from a legal element of Katherine of Aragon's claim to her husband, and to a matter of life and death for Anne Boleyn.

Presently, the king strode into the queen's presence chamber with Chapuys in tow. Elizabeth dropped in a synchronized curtsy with the rest of the ladies.

"Excellency, may I present to you her Majesty, Queen Jane."

Jane stepped forward and nodded while Chapuys swept the most exquisite bow ever accorded to her; she blushed a bit at the reverence.

"Well, I will leave you two to talk in private," Henry smiled, satisfied with himself.

Elizabeth faded to the background and pretended to ready a tray of wine and sweet-meats. A few lines of the queen and ambassador's conversation broke free and floated her way.

"…Such a virtuous, amiable queen on the throne…especially since it is said your majesty is a peacemaker…" Chapuys's lyrical accent carried across the chamber like a lute perfectly in tune. At Jane's silence, Chapuys continued, emboldened.

"…And that you mean to restore the Lady Mary to the line of succession."

At that, Elizabeth's head darted up. Jane appeared intensely uncomfortable, but she put on a brave face. "I can only say again that I will do my best to restore the Lady Mary to the king's good graces," Jane equivocated.

Shortly thereafter—too shortly after in Elizabeth's estimation—Henry reappeared and whisked Chapuys away. She looked down at the now obsolete tray of refreshments she assembled.

"Since it appears his Excellency was no more than an apparition, perhaps we ladies should not allow this spiced wine and sweet-meats to go to waste." Elizabeth looked to Jane for approval, and the queen nodded her assent. Even after Jane downed her mulled wine, she looked pale and shaken.

Cromwell stared down at his dispatches: Lincolnshire was a heartbeat away from revolt. He scanned the hastily scrawled letter. Something, something. Situation dire. Something else. No new taxes. Restore the monasteries. Supplant Lord Cromwell with men of noble birth. At that last part, Cromwell had to laugh bitterly. Poor farmers would rather see a selfish, whoring, inept man like Charles Brandon at the right hand of the king instead of the humble son of a blacksmith.

He chucked the letter into the fire. Returning to his chair, he drummed his elegant fingers on the desk. How strange that those hands were once gnarled with the thick scars of war. Now he had the smooth hands of a gentleman scholar. Perhaps time healed more than he gave it credit for.

He would survive this latest upheaval in the same way he had managed to scramble out from among the wreckage of Wolsey and the Boleyns. In the same way he had survived the deaths of his first wife and two little girls. Consciously, he decided not to think of his daughters because when he did, he missed them so much he could not breathe.

Better to think about Lissie instead. He had one of his pages go ask if she might walk with him for a while in the gardens. Elizabeth sent back a smarting reply that she would rather jump in the Thames than go anywhere with him.

A man more skilled in love would go to her and tell her the truth: I want you for yourself. I want you to love me as I love you. I want my home to have children again, and I do not care if they are boys or girls. As long as they are born healthy. But he did not know how to tell her what was in his heart. He had never known.

Sighing, he looked down at his work. Before him lay a contract. As a last ditch effort to earn Elizabeth's affections, he drafted an agreement whereby he—as her husband—would obviously take title of her estates in the North. However, in the contract, he stipulated to paying her the current value of her holdings in a lump sum of gold that was hers to do with as she wished.

Henry dined privately with Jane in her rooms. Privately, in the royal vocabulary, meant the queen was accompanied by her ladies, while Henry's grooms looked on. Sir Francis kept trying to catch Ursula's eye. She flicked her eyes at Francis for less than a moment. Indeed, if she had not been looking for it, Elizabeth would not have noticed.

Edward stood proudly amongst the other gentlemen of the privy chamber. Elizabeth wondered what he was doing wearing such heavy fur trimming this late into spring. Probably to make his shoulders appear more broad than they actually were. Sensing her eye on him, he slid a side-long glance, as if to say, Jump in the Thames? Are you trying to make Cromwell put you in the Tower?

Elizabeth retreated to her own private world of her thoughts. What sort of husband would Cromwell be anyway? What sort of lover? What if he were the sort of man that delighted in a woman's cries of pain? Perhaps he preferred whores or young boys. If she were lucky, he might just leave her to her own devices. The best Elizabeth hoped for was that Cromwell would treat their marriage as another business enterprise and just let her stay in Jane's rooms.

"Forgive me, but I heard your Majesty may still proceed against the Lady Mary?" At Jane's hushed, cautious voice, Elizabeth's ears pricked up. She held her breath. Careful, Janey, she thought. Tread lightly.

Henry fixed the same terrifying look on Jane that Elizabeth had seen him give Anne Boleyn.

Bravely, Jane pressed on. "With all my heart, I beg you not to."

Henry rose from his chair and crossed over to Jane. Putting his hands on her shoulders, he hissed, "Are you out of your senses? Do not talk of such things again." Henry then reseated himself as though nothing had taken place. As quickly as he slid into his darkness, his good humor returned.

"Sweetheart, I have another wedding present for you," Henry beamed. He clapped his hands, and a servant brought forth a puppy with eyes so deep and earnest that Elizabeth almost wept.

Throughout the morning, the reports of unrest in the North arrived with increasing frequency. Absentmindedly, Cromwell gnawed on a cinnamon stick. Things could deteriorate quickly. And, if that happened? Henry certainly would not be patting him affectionately and calling him, Tom. More importantly, the king would no longer be eager to reward his diligent minister with the hand of lovely Elizabeth Seymour.

Cromwell chewed harder on the cinnamon bark. Even a whisper of trouble in the North might pique Lissie's interest—if for no other reason than to spite him. A troubling thought entered his mind: Elizabeth could easily send the gold up North if he paid her for her estates in coin. Even worse, with that much coin on hand, she could flee a marriage that she made no secret she wanted nothing to do with.

Energized by the urgency of the situation, Cromwell sat upright. With the spice stick between his front teeth, he pulled out a blank sheet of paper and drafted a very different contract. When he called Sir Richard to him, Cromwell was just sprinkling the sand in order to dry the ink.

"Ah, Sir Richard, I have a job for you."

Rich held back a smile: when Cromwell said he had a job for you, a man knew that his life was about to become very interesting.

"Take this to Lady Elizabeth Seymour and make sure she signs it." Cromwell handed over the document. Rich cursorily scanned the precise Latin. He frowned.

"Forgive me, my lord, but I thought you were of a mind to pay the lady for the value of her holdings upfront."

Cromwell grinned mischievously. "Oh, come now Sir Richard, would you trust a woman with that much coin at the ready?"

Rich laughed heartily.

"Besides," Cromwell continued, "anything the lady desires, she only need ask for. She knows I will deny her nothing."

Rich thought, The only thing that girl desires is to not have to find out what the Lord Privy Seal has under all of his black robes.

Cromwell chewed thoughtfully on the cinnamon stick and said, "Now, we need to keep the wedding and the banquet small. No need to draw even more attention to the fact the heretical son of a blacksmith is marrying the beautiful sister-in-law of the king. Which is why," Cromwell paused, and Rich cocked his head in sudden interest, "which is why we need to move the wedding up. Rather than let the court ruminate for the next ten days, or prolonging the inevitable for Lady Elizabeth, let us move the wedding up to the day after tomorrow. Assuming that does not interfere with his Majesty's and Lord Suffolk's hunting, I can imagine no impediment."

"I will be sure to tell the lady." Rich bowed his head and left. He did not know why, but he was eager to see the look on headstrong Elizabeth Seymour's face when she realized that she would have to make do as every other woman in England: at her husband's mercy.

Cromwell beckoned several of his nearest clerks to him. "Gentlemen, we must keep our skills flexible with unorthodox assignments." He pointed to the youngest men in the group with the least experience. "You two, I want you both to come up with a list of four or five ladies to attend my wife. For God's sake, keep the nobility out of it. Cull the names from any rich merchants we owe a favor to."

He moved down the line. "And, I need you two to look into some civil and canon law. When Archbishop Cranmer asks, 'and if there be any among you who object to the union of this man and this woman'—I don't want any surprises. Namely, I don't want the bride objecting to her own marriage." Cromwell bit down harder on the stick. "In fact, ask Cranmer if we can dispense with that part of the vow altogether. Lads, what is the one thing a lawyer must never do in open court?"

"Never ask a question he does not already know the answer to," the young men replied like choristers in perfect union.

"Finally, you both go out into the city. I want you to go to the best cloth merchants and recruit their tailors. Tell them we will pay anything—within reason. But, I want my bride's gown finished by midnight tomorrow. And we all must suffer new jackets as well. His Majesty forbids that we attend wearing black."

Having planned his wedding, Cromwell sat back down to begin work on another bill for Parliament. As one of the clerks turned to leave, he looked at his master and smiled: Thomas Cromwell was a force of nature.

After hearing Mass with the queen, Elizabeth and the other ladies scuttled back to the queen's rooms to change from their sober church gowns and back into their usual ivory ones. As the ladies set about preparing for the rest of the day, Jane gave her usual speech to her troops.

"Do your duties honorably and virtuously. And, remember that we are all bound to serve and obey." At that last part, Jane stared down her sister. Elizabeth blushed and lowered her eyes. Jane was never stern with her. But, this time Jane was deadly serious about the Cromwell business. Last night, as Elizabeth brushed out Jane's hair, she had said as much: "Keep your game apace with Cromwell, and he will throw us all in the Tower."

Presently, Jane called Lady Rochford over to her. The lone Boleyn survivor—saving Anne's sister, who had the good sense to marry for love. Lady Rochford brushed Elizabeth's shoulder as she passed to join the queen. Elizabeth suspected that Jane Boleyn bore her some lingering resentment; George Boleyn's widow had thought to be the new queen's chief lady-in-waiting. Perhaps Cromwell had made her some vague promise of a reward for helping him to send Anne and George to Hell. Now, Cromwell would not even respond to her letters asking why her pension as a viscontess had not been restored to her.

Just as Elizabeth was about to relocate in order to eavesdrop more effectively on her sister and Lady Rochford, Sir Richard Rich strut into the queen's rooms as if he himself were the Lord Privy Seal. Rolling her eyes insolently, Elizabeth greeted him: "I suppose this has to do with me."

Rich waved forward a nervous young clerk with a scroll of paper in one hand and a quill and an ink-well in the other. Unrolling the scroll, Rich showed the script to Elizabeth.

"You see, the Latin says," Rich began to explain.

"I can read the Latin for myself!" Elizabeth interrupted as she snatched the paper from his hands. Only one or two sentences in, she understood what she was reading: a contract in which Cromwell broke his contract. The document transferred over to him all of her assets left to her by her first husband. But, where there was supposed to be a proviso for payment to her of the estates' current value in coin, Cromwell had inserted something quite different. Instead of the gold he promised her, he would now only allow her a small interest in the income earned on the wool produced on her—actually, now his—lands.

Elizabeth did not realize she wept until the tears dripped onto the document, blurring the proud, neat signature of Thomas Cromwell. She stared up at Rich, stunned and desperate. Was Cromwell determined to leave her nothing for herself? Did he need to possess every aspect of her life, every part that made her who she was?

"Sir Richard…" tears streamed down her face, and she did nothing to wipe them away.

"Sign it, my lady, or else he will find a signature to pass for yours," Rich said tiredly. "Lord Cromwell is a fair businessman," he added, as if that should comfort her. He put the quill in her hand and motioned for the clerk to turn around and offer his back as a writing desk. She smoothed the document flat against his black jacket and signed away her former life in which she was her own mistress.

Glancing up, she saw Lady Rochford whimpering pathetically.

"…Even Lord Cromwell has refused to answer my letters," Jane Boleyn whined. Elizabeth wanted to slap her down for being a simpering ninny. Slap her down for being foolish enough to think Cromwell would help her after he used her.

"All is well again, all is mended," Jane cooed sympathetically. Angrily, Elizabeth blotted her tears away. Will you mend my life, Janey? Can anything be well again?

"I shall speak to Lord Cromwell on your behalf," Jane assured Lady Rochford.

"Perhaps Lady Elizabeth would have better luck with Lord Cromwell," Lady Rochford said sharply.

"Of course, if her finances are so dire, Lady Rochford could seek a new husband. But, it is a pity none will have her. I cannot imagine why a man would not want to make Boleyn's widow a wife again," Elizabeth retorted.

"That is enough," Jane ruled. "We women carry enough of the world's burdens as it is. We need not add to them by badgering one another." The room fell silent, and for the first time, Elizabeth thought, My sister will be a great queen. Not just a good one, but a great one.

"Lady Rochford, take these jewels to Lady Bryan and tell her to use them to buy new clothes for the Lady Elizabeth…I am so looking forward to meeting the Lady Mary," Jane said by way of changing the subject.

"Your Majesty is very kind," Lady Rochford said sheepishly.

"Lady Rochford, it is not your fault that your husband betrayed you anymore than it is Mary's fault or Elizabeth's fault to be born of a king. Women are much put upon in this world. It's my desire as much as I can to promote their interests. I must do it quietly. But, I will do it all the same. And, I trust you'll help me." Jane smiled at Lady Rochford.

Stung, Elizabeth could not imagine why Jane would choose Lady Rochford as her agent of mercy over her own sister. Had Jane figured since Elizabeth had been snapped up by Cromwell that she would be watched too closely to be of use anymore?

Cromwell and Rich decided to make an impromptu visit to the Master of Horse. While poring over the accounts of the horses' feed, Rich dropped his quill.

"Good God, man! Why so jumpy?" Cromwell muttered.

"Does it not worry you my lord…?"

"Worry me? Yes, the cost of grain worries me. If we could be rid of these damned feast days, we could boost the yield enough to drive down the price." Cromwell did not even glance up from the accounts.

"Does it not worry you that the lady is so against marrying you?" Rich burst out. Cromwell slowly raised his eyes to meet Rich's, but said nothing.

"My lord, the lady's disdain for the marriage…well it could lead to…what I mean to say is this: what if the lady weeps and protests to the queen? What if out of sisterly affection, her Majesty disfavors you? What will you do then?"

Cromwell returned to his calculations. "What will I do, Sir Richard? I will do the same as I did with the other two queens."

When Rich turned back to the palace, Cromwell pulled aside one of the grooms. As he put his arm around the boy, he dropped a few coins in the youth's pocket.

"Show me Lady Elizabeth Seymour's horses," he demanded. Cromwell looked them over and gently inspected their hooves. "Make sure these horses remain unshod."

"Don't say it," Elizabeth muttered. Ursula remained quiet, but linked her arm through her friend's. Jane, seeing Elizabeth had been visibly upset at Sir Richard's visit, had told her that both she and the new puppy could probably do with a walk in the gardens. Now, Elizabeth tugged on the satin leash to steer the little creature from an exquisite flower patch.

"Oh, go ahead and say it!" Elizabeth said irritably.

"I told you Lord Cromwell would never let you keep your lands. I don't care how many languages he speaks, for he cannot speak the truth in any of them," Ursula said gently.

"I'm done for. To the dogs for me. He will lock me up, and I will never see you again," she sighed. Ursula took the leash from her.

"He will have to let you out occasionally to attend the queen," she observed scientifically. They walked on without another word, slowly winding their way through the mazes that cut through the gardens. The same paths that Anne Boleyn stumbled over while she looked for Henry. Trying to run, but staggering under the weight of her daughter.

Elizabeth and Ursula rounded a tall shrub and almost walked into Edward. Ursula bobbed a curtsy, but Elizabeth did not bother. Graciously, Ursula led the puppy away so Elizabeth could have the semblance of privacy with her brother.

"Bad tidings?" she asked him.

"Not terribly so. It would seem that your wedding has been moved ahead. Day after tomorrow. So, that may not be good for you. But, at least Father will not be able to make it on time to give you away at the wedding. So, I won't have to see him," Edward chuckled. Elizabeth nodded. No sense in delaying the inevitable. At least she would not spend the next two weeks wondering how it would feel to have Cromwell between her naked thighs.

"Does the king at least not disagree to the breakneck pace of my courtship?"

Edward tried to laugh, but it came out more like the bark of a hound. "Ha! His Majesty made sport of it today at privy council meeting. Clapped Cromwell on the shoulder and said, 'a little lust brewing in my minister? Afraid to wait much longer for fear of ravishing the lady?'"

Elizabeth shrugged. She had already decided to mitigate whatever ravishment Cromwell had in store for her by drinking as much of the wedding ale as she could stomach. "But, Cromwell is not one to be led around by his cod-piece. What do you think the real reason is?" she asked.

Edward pulled her in close and steered her behind a wall of ivy. "Our brother, Tom, has intercepted some interesting news. Trouble in the North. One of Cromwell's own agents—William Leech—was dragged from his horse and hung."

"Will you not tell his Majesty?" gasped Elizabeth.

"Goodness, no! Better to let the king find out only once things are truly awful—he will be all the angrier at Cromwell. Who knows? His head may shortly end up on a spike on London Bridge, and you will be free of him." He pinched her cheek. "So, you see, Lissie? Not all bad tidings." He turned to go.

"So, what do you need me for?" she called after his back. Edward stopped and partially turned his head.

"Because, Cromwell has an annoying habit of survival."

When Elizabeth returned to her room in order to change her gown for dinner, she found a dozen strangers rifling through her chests of gowns: making notes of the contents, and then carefully packing them into trunks.

She stood speechless in the doorway. Eventually, she said loudly, "How now? It seems I am to go on progress without the court."

One of Cromwell's men (Christ, how many does he have, she thought) scurried over to her. He bowed deeply and explained: "My Lord Cromwell ordered that your things be moved to his apartments as soon as possible. With the wedding so near, Lord Cromwell said he thought that the sooner you were settled in, the better."

She caught him by the elbow. "I was under the impression I would continue to live in the queen's rooms to better serve her Majesty."

He bowed again, as if to apologize for having to correct her. "My Lord Cromwell was adamant you be lodged in his apartments. He told me, 'where else should a wife sleep, but at her husband's side?'" Realizing the intimacy of what he had just said, he lowered his eyes. "Begging your pardon, my lady, but, those were his exact words." The young man returned to the task at hand.

Helplessly, Elizabeth watched as complete strangers folded her garments into travelling trunks. She noticed four young girls layering dried lavender and sage in between brocade and silk gowns. One of them looked up and motioned for the other girls to follow. Far beyond courtly etiquette at this point, Elizabeth blurted out, "Who are you?"

The girls glanced at one another as if daring each other to be the first to answer. The oldest stepped forward and curtsied. "My lady, my name is Alice West. Lord Cromwell has appointed us to your service."

None of the girls looked remotely familiar. But, when Elizabeth took in quality of the silk they wore and the jewels encrusted on their bodices, she guessed at once these girls came from new, trading money. Daughters of rich merchants who owed their keeping to men like Cromwell, and not nobles like Charles Brandon.

"I had just assumed I would appoint my own ladies," Elizabeth said coolly. "One of the few privileges left to wives."

Alice shrugged irreverently. "Lord Cromwell said he willed it so."

Elizabeth did not waste her breath arguing. Alice smiled and behind her eyes, Elizabeth saw the shrewdness of a merchant. So, Cromwell wanted his own kind around his wife. If she was going to have to live in Cromwell's rooms, then she was quite beyond Jane's jurisdiction and help.

Elizabeth's eyes felt heavy with building tears. Cromwell would not even allow her the solace of the genuine friendship of a few confidantes. Can he leave me nothing? Nothing that can just be mine? She thought, miserably. A girl like Alice would never bathe her face in rose water if it was puffy from crying, or keep women's secrets. No, Alice would tell Cromwell everything that went on while he was away: who came to see Elizabeth, who she wrote to, what she said about her husband when she thought no one could hear."

"Well, Mistress West can you at least find me my brushes and paint so I have something to do while you prepare me for my pilgrimage?"

Alice shook her head. "I am sorry, my lady, but, your paints, inks, and drafting chalk have already been packed and sent over." Alice smirked a bit. "My lord said those were some of the first things that should be sent over. "

Elizabeth sighed, "And, what of my books?"

"Lord Cromwell wanted those over with him as well."

What an acute way Cromwell had of making his resentment known. Had she really been that naughty with Sir Francis?

Alice turned around without so much as a curtsy and returned to the business of boxing up Elizabeth Seymour and sending her to Cromwell, bit by bit.

Elizabeth walked slowly through the queen's rooms so as not to draw attention to herself. As if in a trance, she wove her way through the great hall, brimming with ambassadors and supplicants. She descended the stairs leading out to the stable yard carefully so that her heels would not make a great clatter. Once outside, she calmly asked one of the stable hands to bring her hunter around.

"But my lady, you are not dressed for riding. You do not even have gloves," he told her.

She tried to laugh, but it came out too high to be anything but desperate. "I can see to my own wardrobe. You can see to bringing my mare around."

Still, the groom seemed dubious. He took his hat off, wringing it in his hands. "The thing is, my lady, your mare threw a shoe."

"Then bring round one of my other horses, " she insisted.

"Your other horses are not shod, either."

She approached him, deliberately coming too close. "You mean to tell me all my horses have thrown their shoes today. Even though I have not gone riding in two days?"

The stable hand looked round to one of his companions for support. Discreetly, they all nodded.

"Yes, that's right, my lady."

"Ah, I think I understand."

Once back in her room, Elizabeth paced like the lion in the Tower. She perspired and tugged at her bodice. Why was it so hot? Why could she not breathe? When she could bear no more, she shouted at everyone in the room to leave her. They could finish packing her off to the dark prince tomorrow.

Her breath entered and left her rapidly, as if she had just finished running the length of Whitehall. She ran her hands up and down her bodice. I can't breathe, she thought. Oh, God, I can't breathe.

"Ursula! Alice! Someone—please help," she called out. The faster Elizabeth tried to inhale, the more she felt as though she could not draw in a proper breath to save her life. All she could think was to get her bodice off. Her hands clumsily reached back in vain to unlace her gown.

"Someone! Please!" She cried out again. But, all the ladies had gone in to dine with the rest of the court. Elizabeth fumbled through empty drawers until she came across the dagger Ursula kept on her side of the bed: an instant answer. Gripping the jewel encrusted handle, she pulled her stomacher away with one hand and ripped the blade through the fabric with the other. Once she sliced the blade through the stomacher, she yanked her arms out of the attached sleeves.

With no one around, she sank down to her knees, her skirts billowing out from her like a rose in full bloom. No one to see and no one to hear. She let out a wild sob that scared her. She cried harder than when her mother died, or other siblings died in infancy. She wrapped her arms tightly around her waist and rocked herself. No, this was worse than losing her mother because she was losing herself. She had dared to fly in the face of Thomas Cromwell, to spite him. And, he had responded more than in kind. He clipped her wings and then some.

In her sobs, she lost sense of time. For all she knew, she sat on the cool floor for one minute or one hour. The sound of her crying drowned out the sound of the footsteps behind her. At the feeling of cool fingertips caressing the nape of her neck, she did not even start. She did not even bother to turn around.

"It would appear that you have won, Lord Cromwell," she said. Cromwell knelt in front of her, but she could not meet his eyes.

Putting his hands on her bare shoulders, he said, "It was never about winning."

"It's always about winning with you."

Gently, he stroked her tears away with the backs of his fingers. "You should not waste tears. Save them for something truly terrible."

Irritably, she batted his hands from her face, and rubbed her tears away with her fists. With his hands still on her shoulders, he drew her up to standing.

"I came to bring you this," he said, placing a heavy pouch in her hands. He rested his forehead against the top of her hair.

"Pearls?" she asked him. She could feel their spherical shape through the silk pouch.

"Black ones. From the seas off of China. The Queen of France has a set." He slid his hands down from her shoulders to place them at the small of her back. He pulled her closer to him so that her face rested against his chest.

Well, at least he smells nice, Elizabeth thought.

"It doesn't have to be like this, Lissie," he murmured into her hair. "You don't have to fight me every step of the way. I can make you happy. Please." At that last word, his voice had a tinge of desperation.

"I don't want you to make me happy."

"Just let me love you," he said and held her tighter. The seal of his office cut into the tender flesh just above her stays. "Come to bed with me."

At that, Elizabeth's eyes shot open. Was he mad? She started to push him away, but he held her fast to him.

"Come to bed with me tonight. Let me make love to you tonight. You will see that I will be a good husband to you." He kissed the side of her face, seeking her lips. "No one need know. We are almost married as it is." He caught one of her hands as she tried push him away. He held it flat against his robes.

"You can have me soon enough. And you have humiliated me enough for one day," she spat.

He knotted his fingers through hers and dragged her hand down his doublet, to his breeches.

"Let me take you to bed. All I want is to make love to you," he insisted. He shoved her hand down into his breeches. He guided it to his painfully erect member, already beginning to weep with the anticipated coupling. "Feel me, feel what you do to me. Does that feel like a man who has a score to settle with you? Or a man that just wants to lie with a beautiful woman."

Too shocked to say anything, Elizabeth remained in his embrace.

He moved her hand up his shirt, over the flat chest, so that her hand came to rest on his heart.

"Please. Let us go to my bed, our bed now. I just want to hold you. We need not couple. Just sleep in my arms. Let me comfort you. We can start again."

She pulled her hand back, and he let her step away from him.

"Are you mad?" she asked. "Do not forget that I am sister to the Queen of England. I will be aunt to the next king of England. And you? You, are rich." She held up the black pearls as proof of that fact. "But, when the sun sets at the end of the day, you are still the son of a blacksmith with soot under his nails."

The color of desire quickly drained from his face.

She burst into tears again and sat on the floor. "And as for the rest of the business, you can wait until after we married."

His clear blue eyes took her in, and then he swept her a bow to take leave of her. Sister to the queen, sitting on the floor, half-naked and crying.

Suddenly, she cried out, ragged with sobs, "Thomas!"

He did not turn, did not even slow at the familiarity of his first name.

"Thomas!" she called out again. "My first marriage was never consummated…my first husband, he was too old, he couldn't…"

At that, his steps checked, but he did not stop.

Bewildered, she leaned against the wooden chest behind her. Does that feel like a man who has a score to settle? Or a man that wants to lie with a beautiful woman? Elizabeth feared it was both.

_She sits on a bench. Herself, Madge Shelton, Nan Seville, and Jane Boleyn. They sit in a row like porcelain dolls in matching ivory gowns that bear the emblem of the Queen of England. Jane stares ahead, like a hardened soldier. Nan's eyes dart nervously about._

"_What do you think they want with us?" she asks._

_None of the women answer her._

_Madge begins to cry a little. Her plump cheeks quaver with the effort of trying to maintain her composure. _

"_Oh, will Master Cromwell throw us in the Tower?" she whimpers._

_Elizabeth rolls her eyes, and rests the back of her head against the wall behind them._

"_For God's Sake, Madge. Grab ahold of yourself. We are in the service of the queen. What is the worst that they can honestly do to us?"_


	6. Chapter 6

**A/N Explicit content at the end of the chapter. Rated M for a reason. **

Ursula awoke Elizabeth from a dreamless sleep; she did not even remember picking herself up from the floor and rolling into bed. Ursula gently shook her shoulder and brushed the hair away from her face.

"Oh my God, Oh my God, Lissie. What happened?" Ursula whispered. She turned Elizabeth on her back so she could look in the younger woman's eyes. Elizabeth sat up on her elbows, confused. Then she took in the state of the scenery: the stomacher torn and lying on the floor, her own defeated form on the bed. Wearing nothing but her skirts, stays, and dried tears.

"It's not, not what it must look like," Elizabeth tried to reassure Ursula. But, she looked unsure. Elizabeth put her hand on Ursula's shoulder. "Really. My honor is fully intact. My dignity has suffered the worse for wear."

At Elizabeth's attempt at humor, Ursula tried to smile. "Well, what happened to you? What happened to your gown?"

"Oh, that. My own doing. I could not get it off. I called for you, but-"

"I went in to dine with the rest of the court. Like I was supposed to. As you were supposed to." Ursula sat back. "You were gone. Cromwell was not there making his usual round for bribes. You understand I feared the worst."

"Pity you took so long in getting here. You could have been audience to a real scene: tears, lust, and power," Elizabeth snorted. She rubbed eyes, raw from crying. "Dour Lord Cromwell made a passionate plea for me to go to his bed. Threw another necklace in the bargain." Elizabeth handed over the black pearls so Ursula could inspect them. Fascinated, Ursula held them up to the candlelight, entranced by how the greens melted into blues, which melted into black.

"I take it you said no?" Ursula could not resist trying on the pearls.

Elizabeth laughed. "Of course I said no. I will keep saying no. While I still have the privilege—didn't you know, the law says it's impossible for a man to rape his own wife?" At that last comment, her voice grew dark with resentment. Ursula frowned and took off the necklace.

Cromwell stormed passed Rich, who was trying to flag his attention. He did not stop until he slammed the doors of his private rooms behind him. Angrily, he tore off the seal of his office and his robes of state. He flung himself into his chair by the fire. Cromwell buried his face into his hands. Just when he had thought she could push him no further, she edged him just a little closer to the abyss.

God damn it, Lissie, he thought. I warned you not to obstruct me in my business. Little Dove, why must you make it so hard on yourself, on us? A doubt flickered in his mind. Had he made a miscalculation with Elizabeth Seymour? Was she a wild-card that he was foolish to wager on? He had sheltered under worse houses of cards: Wolsey, Boleyn. In all honesty, he feared what she could drive him to. Feared what he might do to her if she pushed him over the abyss. The alchemy of his infatuation and desire, mixed with his deep loneliness, had shattered his confidence in his ability to maintain mathematic like control over his emotions. Despite what others said about him when his back was turned, he was not vengeful or malicious. Cromwell resented nothing. So, Wolsey fell from favor—but why should that have meant that he himself should have spiraled down with the Cardinal. And, Anne Boleyn? She put it to him plainly enough that she would have him cropped at the neck. So he chose his head over hers. On the day of Anne's execution, he'd collapsed in a heap before an altar, trying to pray, but, mostly grieving for the loss of his friend. Whether she knew it on the scaffold or not, Thomas Cromwell still thought of her as a friend.

Lissie, on the other hand. He resented Lissie everything: her pride, her beauty, her insistence on living her life just as she pleased. Worst of all, he hated her for her singular ability to make him ashamed of his birth. She had said, you are rich. But, she said it to remind him that all the gold in Europe would not change the fact that his father was a drunken blacksmith with a vicious temper. He had thought to break her today. In fact, he came very close; he almost congratulated himself when he came upon her, prostrate, crying with defeat. The elegant nape of her neck exposed as she bent her head. And her bare shoulders. Oh, God, the sight of her bare shoulder blades almost ruined him. Cromwell sat back in his chair and closed his eyes. With her back to him, her slight shoulders resembled the delicate wings of some otherworldly creature. But, after he had defiled them both when he forced her hand to his cock, he knew had lost, thrown himself on the mercy of a woman who the son of a blacksmith had no right to touch. And, she knew it too. Just when he thought that she could sink the blade in no deeper, she went for the jugular; she was a virgin. Did she protest her maidenhead in order to beg gentleness from him after the cruel game she'd put him through? He had attempted tenderness with her, only to be repaid with scorn. Cromwell did not like to make the same mistake twice.

An hour ago, he would have confessed that he loved Elizabeth Seymour. Now, if Cranmer were to ask for his confession, he would have to tell doe-eyed Cranmer that he absolutely hated the queen's sister and would strangle her as soon as couple with her on their wedding night. Frustrated, he unlaced his hose so he could pull his breeches down. Cromwell leaned his head back further as he took hold of his swollen member with one hand and stroked it with the other. Moaning, he gave himself over to the relief his own hands gave him, while forgetting the sin that provided the comfort. His mind played and replayed the sight of Lissie, bare-shouldered, with her skirts billowing out from her like waves racing towards the shore. He thought of her in that darkened room with his weight pressing her stomacher into the desk while he pinned her arm behind her. And the first time he saw her. Newly widowed and returned from the North to enter the service of Anne Boleyn, Lissie was a little wild and audacious. Flushed and breathless from dancing, she had asked him for help changing some of her money from ducats to pounds. About to tell her that if she needed anything, anything else, then he would give it his personal attention, she had turned around and rejoined the dance before he could respond.

Cromwell released a feral groan as he climaxed, gripping the chair to steady himself against the force of the ejaculate. After a few moments, he caught his breath and collected his thoughts. As he cleaned himself, he could not determine who he hated more in that moment: Elizabeth or himself. Elizabeth for driving him to the sin. Himself for obliging her.

Elizabeth woke the next morning to precious nothingness; the first few moments of the early morning when the day ahead has nothing to do with the events preceding it. As she took in the room around her, Ursula's sleeping back, for a moment the day seemed like any other. She leaned back on her pillow, and the lingering dampness of her hair brought memories of last night flooding back. Ursula had insisted on the maids bring up the bathing tub, thinking a thorough scrubbing would help Elizabeth put the day and Cromwell's roaming hands behind her. Despite her protestations that she would go to bed with a wet head, Ursula insisted that Elizabeth dunk her head in the hot water, sweet with lavender and chamomile.

Once out of bed, she pinned her damp hair on top of her head so she could splash cold water on her face. As she patted her face dry with a square of fine linen, she caught a look of herself in the mirror. I have seen better days, she thought. Her eye-lids remained painfully swollen from crying, and her cheeks had lost their color. Ursula's face appeared besides hers in the mirror.

"Poor you," Ursula remarked. "Better not look like that tomorrow, else Lord Cromwell might change his mind."

With all of her gowns now held hostage by Cromwell, Elizabeth wore one of Ursula's. She was taller than Elizabeth, but thinner. Even though Ursula laced it loosely, Elizabeth still felt smashed inside the bodice. She fidgeted relentlessly.

"You'll have to make due. And for love of God, do not take the dagger to this gown," Ursula said as they went into Jane's bedchamber to help dress the queen. Jane took in the sight of her sister with a single disapproving glance that said our brothers would be very disappointed to see you lose your looks so quickly. Jane waved Elizabeth over to her.

"I trust you are feeling better after whatever sudden illness overtook you last night, such that you could not come to dine with the rest of the court," Jane said quietly. Then a little louder, so everyone else could hear: "I like all my ladies to hear mass with me, dine with me. Except of course those of you who have husbands. Your place is with them." Jane flashed a knowing glance at Elizabeth. Then she raised her arms so Elizabeth could pull the sleeping shift over Jane's head. As quickly as she could, mindful of Jane's painful modesty, she pulled a clean shift over her sister's head. Ursula wrapped the stays around Jane and held them in place while Elizabeth set to work lacing up them up.

Jane Boleyn came forward with the queen's gown laid flat in her outstretched hands, as if she were making an offering. She smirked, "Lady Elizabeth, you must be overwrought with excitement for your wedding tomorrow. You look as though you have no slept a wink for anticipation of it."

Elizabeth fastened the underskirts before taking the gown from Lady Rochford without a word. Disappointed that Elizabeth had not snapped up the bait, Lady Rochford pressed on.

"Goodness, Lady Elizabeth. Think how rich you will be. How rich are the monasteries? Well, that's how rich you will be. You just keep marrying richer and richer."

Elizabeth laced Jane's gowns. "Well, Lady Rochford, my first husband left me very comfortable. So, I need not take a husband in order to settle my accounts and debts."

"But, Lady Elizabeth, all your holdings will go to your husband. At least Lord Cromwell did not need your inheritance to make him a rich man. He makes himself a rich man by, well I am not sure how exactly he makes himself even richer. Like I said, you keep marrying richer and richer. Lucky, you. You get to keep marrying richer, while you marry younger husbands."

Elizabeth waited for Jane to intervene, but the queen stood passively. Allowing herself to be dressed up like a little doll. Out for blood, Lady Rochford continued her onslaught.

"Well, that first husband of yours in the North. You could not have been more than fifteen, sixteen when you married him. God, he must have been five times your age child! Here we are, six years later, and you are going to marry a man only twice your age. At least you are on the correct trajectory."

"You are very good with numbers Lady Rochford," Elizabeth replied smoothly. She moved to face the queen in order to straighten the diadem. Unexpectedly, Jane took Elizabeth's face in her hands.

"Lissie, you are not well, are you? Go rest today. Lady Ursula can attend you," Jane said. Elizabeth, unsure if she was being reprimanded or not, curtsied sheepishly , and left Jane's chamber as quickly she could.

Ursula trotted after her. "Why did you run out of there like a scolded puppy? Her Majesty can see you're distressed. The queen just wanted to spare you from Jane Boleyn's poison," Ursula said reassuringly.

"My sister probably did not want me to disgrace her rooms with a crying bout or a tantrum."

Ursula led her to sit on their bed and poured Elizabeth a glass of ale. She pressed something into her hand.

"The queen slipped me these to give to you," Ursula said. She opened her palm to reveal a beautiful ruby rosary and a gold locket. "Don't you know, these belonged to Katherine of Aragon?" Ursula opened the locket to reveal a painstakingly detailed miniature of the Madonna and Child. Lovingly, Elizabeth ran her fingers over the locket. If Cromwell saw it, he would probably confiscate the locket as an impermissible veneration of the Virgin. And then melt the chain down to mint coins.

"Bishop Gardiner slipped these to her Majesty on her wedding night," Ursula whispered. "Maybe the queen hopes these will be of some comfort today." And, strangely, they were. The idea of queens passing on the rosary and locket to other women, with their blessing that the women following them might find the happiness denied to those before them. Elizabeth wiped a tear away.

"Oh, don't start with that again. Your eyes are practically swollen shut as it is. I am calling for your tub again. You need a hot soak and a nap."

Elizabeth smiled in spite of the bleakness she felt. "A hot bath? Is that your solution to everything?"

Ursula shrugged. "That and a glass of wine. Come now, let's order up your bath. With jasmine and rose, for desire."

"I'm not sure I want to stoke the fires of Lord Cromwell's lust," Elizabeth said skeptically. Ursula shook her head and laughed.

"Not for him, dunce. But, for your own sake. Blow out the candles, and you can pretend Thomas Cromwell is Charles Brandon. Just have a care to call out, 'Thomas! Thomas!" Not 'Oh, my Lord Suffolk, you are the very best!'"

Elizabeth took the liberty of pouring herself a glass of unwatered wine. "For better or worse, I will have nothing to compare. So, perhaps I can moan like a whore for Cromwell without perjuring myself." She downed her wine in two gulps. Closing her eyes, she pressed the cold pewter of the chalice against her forehead. "Ursula, I won't know what to do, how to please him, how to please myself. Tell the truth, are you still a maid?" Elizabeth looked up with big, pleading eyes.

Ursula poured herself a deep glass of wine. "At which part should I laugh? Where you ask me if I am honestly without touch of man? Or the part where you ask how to please yourself. Because, I tell you this, Lissie: when he breaks your maidenhead, there will be no pleasure. Only varying degrees of discomfort. Of all the times you want to nettle Cromwell, believe me, your wedding night is not the time."

Elizabeth blanched a jaundiced shade of pale. Ursula refilled Elizabeth's glass of wine, realizing that she had just put the fear of God into her friend.

"What I mean to say," Ursula amended carefully, "is that you should prop a pillow under your hips, and not worry about the blood."

Elizabeth still looked unconvinced.

"Oh, just drink your wine!" Ursula exclaimed. "And, would I be able to advise you if I were still maid?"

"What if he hurts me?"Elizabeth asked in a small voice. Her small hands began to shake as they held her cup. She remembered the strength with which Cromwell had pulled her to him.

"If? Lissie, I guarantee you, it will hurt. But, what you want is a man who does not _want _it to hurt for you. That is the best you can ask for."

Once Ursula saw Elizabeth into the tub, she left Elizabeth to loll her head in the sweet smelling water. Ursula caught a few of the jasmine blossoms that floated in the steaming bath like wilted masts of shipwrecks. Winking, Ursula pushed the sweet smelling blossoms into her stomacher. Elizabeth watched Ursula leave, while wearing the emerald necklace that Sir Francis Bryan had used to entice her.

The boys were a little giddy. Like love struck girls, they could not help themselves; their Lord Cromwell would marry the queen's sister tomorrow. More importantly, Lord Cromwell had gifted new jackets and breeches to his clerks, so that they too could attend the Lord Privy Seal's wedding. For the majority of the boys, the rich burgundy brocade was the finest cloth ever to grace their backs. The clerks awoke at the first stirring of dawn to find a small purse of gold tied to a pear sitting on each of their desks. One eager young man even went so far to declare this day better than all the Twelve Days of Christmas put together.

"You'll never be able to rid yourself of them now. Those boys will follow you from Dover to Damascus," Rich remarked, amused.

Cromwell's face was buried in the leather dossier he carried with him wherever he went. "I'm sorry, Sir Richard, did you say something?" Little chance in trying to explain to Rich why a powerful man made himself greater by elevating those that served him, rather than degrade them as expendable servants. Cromwell motioned for Rich to follow him back to his private desk.

"Take a look at this." Cromwell pointed at an exquisitely carved teak box. Rich bent down to peer inside. The contents appeared to be a skull, but the eyes were so brilliant, Rich could not be sure of its authenticity. "Found it at Sawley Abbey," Cromwell continued. "People thought the saint's bones were alive. Paid what little money they have for cures and benedictions." He shook his dark head in disgust. Rich looked again, and saw the small lever that, when turned, made the saint's skull appear animated.

Cromwell thumbed through the morning's reports. "Any opposition to the work of the Church Commissioners?" he asked, disinterested.

Well, you certainly don't look like a man on the eve of his wedding to a beautiful woman, Rich thought to himself. In response to Cromwell's non-question question, Rich replied, "Not as much as we expected."

At that, Cromwell tore his eyes from his dossier, and looked straight at Rich. "Why should we have expected it?" Cromwell asked, his face genuinely uncomprehending. Rich searched for the right sentence, the right tone to convey to his lord that the Reformation did not enjoy universal support. Cromwell sat heavily in behind his desk. "People can see for themselves that the monasteries should be dissolved for their carnal and abominable living," Cromwell insisted, as if conviction were enough to make his statement true.

Rich weighed the merits of trying to explain to Cromwell that the monasteries were not just treasuries of the Catholic Church. As rich as the monastic houses were, those same houses also served as hospitals, as sanctuaries for the poor. Instead, he elected to solicit the good humour of his master.

"It is true that ordinary people are so greedy upon these houses," Rich conceded. He could not help but chuckle. "They scavenge night and day. They even take the books to use the paper in their houses of easement." Rich started to laugh in earnest, but Cromwell's sternly arched eyebrow indicated that the use of books—however heretical the writings—in the jakes was no laughing matter.

Cromwell glanced over Rich's shoulder in order to be sure the clerks were fully occupied by showing off their new clothes to one another; the young men seemed to be fully engrossed in their own vanity. Cromwell leaned towards Rich, and said quietly, "We must trust the queen conceives a child quickly."

Rich nodded solemnly. But, inwardly, he thought: I think a barren queen on the throne would suit you, Lord Cromwell, just fine. Easier to write yourself into the succession when there is a big blank spot. Mary illegitimized? Check. Elizabeth a bastard? Check. A son by the king's sister-in-law? Soon to be accomplished.

"Mary is illegitimized. Elizabeth is a bastard. We can't keep making a habit of turning children born in wedlock into bastards. What would Europe think?" Cromwell went on. At the sound of the feminine click of heels, both Rich and Cromwell turned to find Alice West strutting into his offices as if there were nothing untoward about her presence at all.

"I say, my lord, we must do something about all these women stamping in and out of here," Rich muttered.

Alice sank in an awkward, unsteady curtsy. "My Lord Cromwell, you told me to report to you every few hours." Cromwell nodded, and tossed the girl a few silver pieces. She furrowed her brows, trying to hide her disappointment at receiving silver instead of gold.

"Child, I am not asking you steal into the Vatican," he said sharply in response to her sunken face.

"Thing is, neither of her brothers have called on her today," Alice said. "Neither has the queen. Her majesty remarked that Lady Elizabeth looked unwell, sent her back to her bedchamber to rest. She's been sitting in her bathing tub for about two hours now."

Rich smirked. Alice, have mercy on our Lord Cromwell, he thought. Do you really need to tell our spurned Lord Privy Seal that Elizabeth Seymour has been in naked repose, lying in her bath for all the morning?

"But, I got there before she took her bath. I asked if she needed anything, but she was far away in prayer. Kneeling at her prie-dieu with a rosary." Alice glanced up to see if the report still interested Cromwell. Indeed, he nodded with each piece of information. He gestured that she should continue. "Well, her back was to me, so I could not see the rosary. Looked like rubies and gold. She also wore a heavy gold locked that she clasped with one hand, while she prayed the rosary. Oh, and she prayed to the Virgin in Latin," Alice reported smoothly.

"I did not know you spoke Latin, Alice," Cromwell observed. Defensively, Alice straightened her shoulders.

"Well I know enough to know that a prayer beginning with _Ave Maria_ is not a prayer in English," Alice said tersely. Cromwell sat deep in thought. What to do about a wife who would continue blatantly Catholic practices? At least for the time being, her siblings appeared to have distanced themselves from her; he would not have to worry about Queen Jane trying to launch a covert Papist offensive in his own household.

"What about Lady Ursula Misseldon? They are always arm in arm," he pressed.

"A chambermaid told me that Ursula will be arm in arm with Sir Francis all day long."

A wolfish grin spread across Cromwell's face, starting at one corner of his mouth, and not stopping until his entire face was the picture of sinister joy. "So, Lady Elizabeth Seymour finds herself without all the friends she thought she had. Well, Sir Richard, I shall soon learn how loyal a hungry bitch really is."

Elizabeth sat in the large wooden tub, waiting for Ursula to return. When it became obvious her friend must be indisposed, Elizabeth refused to leave the now cool bath water. She called for glass after glass of wine to be brought to her. Too drunk to stand up straight if I even wanted to, she chided herself. Where was Alice? Elizabeth had asked her to fetch some warmed drying towels. Sinking back into the perfumed water, Elizabeth raised her glass of wine in mock salute. Good for you, Alice. Squeeze in a little gossip session with Lord Cromwell while you are supposed to fetch by drying sheets. She dropped her goblet of wine, thinking there was a table to place it on where there was only blank tile.

"Oh, my lady!" gasped Alice. She ran towards to Elizabeth, arms full of soft linen. Elizabeth tried to stand, but staggered back. She might have fallen flat against the floor, naked as a newborn, had Alice not steadied her.

"Oh, my lady! You are drunk," Alice said, thoroughly scandalized. She wrapped Elizabeth tightly in the warmed linen. Alice wrapped Elizabeth's long wet hair in another drying sheet, so that she looked like a Turkish Sultana, fresh from her hammam.

"I have decided to take up drinking alone as a pastime. My apologies Alice, but I do not remember how many glasses I have filled. So, you will not be able to report with precision to Lord Cromwell. Suffice it to say, I cannot stand up on my own." Elizabeth crawled on the bed, a shipwrecked sailor to shore.

"But, my lady, we still need to take measurements for your gown. Lord Cromwell wants it finished by midnight. I don't want the blame if that dress is not finished by then," Alice said frankly.

Elizabeth pulled to covers tightly over her, and she curled herself into a tight ball. "Don't worry Alice. He will know who to blame, and it will not be you that shoulders it. Just tell the tailors to take the measurements from one of my newer gowns. Cromwell has all my dresses anyway." Elizabeth turned her back to Alice, not bothering to dismiss her.

"The maid told me she's passed out and snoring like a drunkard," Tom whispered to Edward as they sat down with the rest of the court to dine. Tom had wanted to see his favorite sister, try to instill good cheer in her. Or, failing that, at least see to it that she did not drink alone. However, Edward had been clear that he did not want either Tom or Jane visiting Elizabeth and lending a sympathetic ear. It would only get her hopes up that she might not actually have to go through with the marriage and unfortunate consummation that would follow, Edward told them. In truth, Tom thought it was because Edward had developed more doubts about the wisdom of the marriage then he wanted to admit; he did not want to have Elizabeth confirm his misgivings to Tom and Jane. Already, Tom had seen Edward speaking in harsh tones with Charles Brandon. Whenever Cromwell would walk by, Brandon would turn to Edward with a stern look that clearly said, Are you mad? Are you really going to put Thomas Cromwell any closer to the Crown then he already is?

"At least she's taking this like a stoic maiden. No crying, no threats to jump out a window," Edward replied after a while. His blonde moustache curved up with his mouth into a bitter smile. He leaned over to Jane, who was seated by his side, and said: "Lissie is getting her beauty sleep for tomorrow."

Jane raised her eye-brow skeptically. "My place is with my younger sister on the night before her wedding."

"No, your place is with your king," Edward said flatly. Discreetly, all three Seymour siblings looked at Henry out of the corners of their eyes. Henry was engrossed in his food-- and the sight of Ursula taking her place among the dancers. Henry's jousting wound was opening again and its mounting pain prevented him joining the dance. Jane watched Henry watching Ursula.

"Looks like I have someone to keep my place warm should I go missing." Jane pushed the food around on her plate, but ate nothing. She tried to smile at the court, even as her heart began to ache. So this is what my life will be, Jane thought. This will be the dance I do every night.

Elizabeth woke up before the dawn. Disoriented, she sat up. She was still wrapped in the drying sheets that she fell asleep in. Her stomach growled with discontent at the dinner she had missed, and her mouth stank with the taste of sour wine. She rubbed her forehead and looked around. No sign of Ursula. Or, Alice, thank God.

As the sun crept in through the window, the light caught the jewels encrusted on her now finished wedding gown. Elizabeth knotted the linen around her and got out of bed. She ran her fingers lightly over the delicate fabric, sown heavily with pearls and emeralds. The richness of the dress frightened her, as if it were on of Holbein's creations, and too precious to actually wear. She circled around the dress again and again, like a commander surveying the battlefield, weighing what she was up against. Ermine trimming peeped out from the over skirts and sleeves. Emeralds as an acknowledgement of the chosen green of the Tudor dynasty. Ermine to remind everyone present that as the queen's sister, Elizabeth was entitled to wear it. Just in case nobles like the Duke of Suffolk forgot that Thomas Cromwell was marrying a royal bride. She blushed a little bit. Elizabeth would walk down the aisle in a gown that must have cost twice that of Jane's wedding dress; she hoped that the queen would not hold it against her younger sister.

When Ursula finally returned to their bedchamber, she looked disheveled and sheepish. She refused to meet Elizabeth's eyes as she helped her into a cold bath. Elizabeth winced at the shock of the cold water.

"It will sober you up. Take down the puffiness in your face and fingers," Ursula said unsympathetically. "You're still swollen with wine. And sweeten your breath with some spearmint. Good God!" Ursula dumped half of the bottle of rosewater into the bath for good measure. "Here. Scrub with this." She shoved a rough spun piece of linen into Elizabeth's hands.

"Where were you all night?" Elizabeth lathered up the lavender soap and attacked her under arms.

"Somewhere I should not have been," Ursula muttered. She yanked an ivory comb through Elizabeth's tangled hair, and tutted at her friend for falling asleep with her wet hair tied up in a towel.

"I envy you. And think every woman should be in a rake's bed." Elizabeth meant Sir Francis Bryan. She splashed a little water at Ursula, trying to rouse a smile. "Oh, come now. It's my funeral today, not yours."

Ursula stood up. "I'm going to get your maids to help wash your hair. And some spearmint. You smell like a jug of wine."

Not you, Elizabeth thought. Please, Ursula, not you of all people. Don't you throw me to the wolf too. As Ursula left, two other maids came in. They scrubbed her scalp with ale, softened it with olive oil, and scalded her with near boiling hot water as they cleaned their treatments out of her hair. Finally, they sat her before the fire as one of them dragged a comb made from cinnamon bark through the length of her red-gold locks. Elizabeth's back roasted as she tried in vain to dry her thick hair.

"Her hair is still damp. Just braid it at the last moment and pin it atop her head. That is as good as we will get," one of the maids said to the other. It appeared to Elizabeth that even the servants had given up on her.

"What's kept you?" snapped Edward. Roughly, he interwove his arm through Elizabeth's.

"I could not get my hair to dry though," she said. It sounded more flippant than she meant it. "Truly. I was not trying to escape through a window."

Edward started to drag her forward, and her heels slid on the marble floor of the chapel at St. James palace. "Let's finish this business through. Move your feet or I will drag you by your hair." He hazarded a glance at her. Sighing, he straightened her veil. "That dress you are wearing costs more than our father's annual pension from the crown. So, you will be married in it, and look happy in your obedience." He snapped his fingers to indicate some of the lesser noblewomen arrange themselves around the train of Elizabeth's gown. Begrudgingly, Jane Boleyn stepped forward to carry part of the train. Over her shoulder, Elizabeth caught sight of Anne Stanhope, Edward's most recent wife. Anne arched an eye-brow like a longbow being drawn taut, as if to say, Yes, I'm here, Lissie. And what will you do about it?

"Does Anne really need to be here?" Elizabeth muttered. The only good thing to come out of the day so far was the sight of Anne following the hem of her gown, holding her train.

"I was hardly going to leave her down at Wolf Hall where Father could get to her. I already lost one wife that way." Edward threaded his fingers through hers in a death grip. "Now, move."

Numbly, Elizabeth started to put one foot before the other. The veil obscured her view, but she could make out a few key figures. The scene was more notable for who was _not _there. Suffolk stood beside his wife, Catherine. God, she looks younger and younger every time I see her, Elizabeth thought. She could not resist a smile as passed Catherine because the Duchess of Suffolk herself took in the richness of the gown. Catherine tugged at Charles's sleeve and whispered that Elizabeth looked like a queen. For his part, Suffolk glared at her just as openly as he did at Edward, as if it were her fault that Thomas Cromwell got to marry the queen's sister. But, Suffolk was the only senior nobleman present at the ceremony. Apart from her brothers, her sister, and the queen herself, the peers of England were conspicuously absent as the blacksmith's son married himself into royalty. Instead, Cromwell had his fixer, Sir Richard Rich, with him accompanied by a few handpicked men. Men of no birth, rank, or origin. Just men that Cromwell's large dark eyes recognized as promising. Promising for what? Elizabeth thought as she passed the anonymous heads, doffed caps pressed to their hearts. Whenever Edward tried to ask Cromwell why he would favor one such obscure clerk over a gentry boy, Cromwell would mumble something about "talent" and "merit."

Edward gave her a gentle shove forward, and Elizabeth found herself standing next to Cromwell. For a man that had practically wept with lust for her only a day before, Cromwell barely registered her presence next to him. He shot her a sideways glance that told her he was displeased with her for making him wait. On reflex, Elizabeth could not help glancing over her shoulder: waiting for a pardon on the scaffold. Jane stood in the front pew with Henry, a queen made if ice, diamonds, and a quiet sadness that had not been there before. Henry kept tracking his eyes past Jane, so they could take in Ursula. Elizabeth gulped as if she had swallowed a rock: for the sake of decency, Henry could not have seduced another woman only one month into his marriage? Please, she prayed. Please let it just be a passing fancy that would not cost Jane her throne or head. If only Master Holbein were here, she thought. What a tableau this would make: everyone's eyes searching for someone, something else.

Before them, Archbishop Cranmer stood, wringing his hands, looking nervous as usual. No doubt Cromwell had hounded the guileless Archbishop until Cranmer could do nothing else but accompany Lord Cromwell on his journey to the precipice of treason. Little wonder that Bishop Gardiner made himself in communicado for this spectacle. Setting his jaw and his courage to the sticking place, Cranmer raised his hands to begin the ceremony. Elizabeth knelt in a dazed state of terror in front of the altar.

"We are gathered here today to join this man, Lord Thomas Cromwell, Baron of Wimbledon, Lord Privy Seal, and the Lady Elizabeth Seymour, in holy matrimony-"

Later, Elizabeth would never recall if she actually said her vows, or said anything at all. Her only memory would be the weight of a half-formed protest in the back of her throat, and a ringing in her ears that drowned out the choristers. She only returned to herself, to the here and now, when Cromwell threw back her veil and kissed her dispassionately on both cheeks.

At the banquet, Henry beamed and kissed her proudly on the forehead. His lips lingered longer than she had wanted; he subtly inhaled the scent of her hair. Jane kissed her cheeks in the same distant way that Cromwell had. Suffolk stepped forward to gallantly kiss the bride's hand.

"You are to be congratulated on your good fortune," he said wryly. Catherine narrowed her eyes at that, but moved to embrace Elizabeth.

"You are the most beautiful bride I think I have seen—saving of course for Her Majesty the Queen," Catherine sounded half-way sincere.

"Well, shall you all dance?" yelled Henry. "This is a wedding after all." The court laughed dutifully and paired off. Cromwell had managed to exclude most of the nobles from wedding itself, but he had not been able to keep them from the feast. As the courtiers formed pairs for the dance, Elizabeth was left standing quite alone on her wedding day. Sir Francis moved to lead her out, but Cromwell looked up from his conversation with Rich long enough shoot Sir Francis a look that made the Black Pope think better of it. Edward pushed his wife, Anne, off on to Tom and crossed the floor to pair with Elizabeth.

"It's happened. The storm will break over his head tomorrow," Edward told her proudly. When she looked at him, confused, he rolled his eyes. "Rebellion? In the North? In Lincolnshire? They are in open revolt. A little skirmish here and there: Cromwell can bury that. But, an open rebellion? Cromwell will have to tell the king tomorrow."

"Who else knows?" Elizabeth gasped with surprise. She peered over at Cromwell: his pages intermittently appeared to whisper things in his ear that drain a little more color out of the Lord Privy Seal's face.

"Brandon, Sir Francis. Bishop Gardiner probably knows. Of course Lord Cromwell and his low born minions all know," Edward smiled at the dawning disaster. "I mean, look at his face." The paler Cromwell's face became, the more his black hair and thick lashes blazed in contrast. He must have felt the weight of her gaze on him because his eyes flickered up. He offered her a thin-lipped smile.

"So I need you up and about tomorrow," Edward continued. "As soon as you are able, come see me straightaway. If Cromwell mentions a single thing, a single innuendo, about the commons rising up, you tell me, Lissie. If he looks concerned, and you say, 'My dear husband, you must unburden your mind to me,' I want to hear about it. All of it."

"He may not want to do much politicking on his wedding night," Elizabeth said tersely. Edward laughed out loud at that.

"Lissie, this is Thomas Cromwell we are talking about. Don't underrate him. If he finds he can administer Wales while rutting on top of you, well then, he will do both at once."

After the sun set, taking with it the heat of the day, Elizabeth stood before the fire place while her maids helped her undress. One of the maids unlaced the sleeves, while the other carefully removed the jewel encrusted bodice. Alice supervised them, making sure each priceless piece of cloth was accounted for and inventoried. Elizabeth hugged her elbows, deeply uncomfortable with standing in Cromwell's bedchamber. The smell of him was everywhere: cloves, cinnamon, and leather. One of the maids unbraided Elizabeth's hair and shook it out into waves.

"All of you, out."

Startled, Elizabeth looked up to see Cromwell leaning in the doorway. She took in his black- edged linen shirt, open at the neck, and untucked. She realized this was the first time she had seen him out of full court dress: his fur trimmed robes of state, the proud gold seal of his office, and the magnificent ruby that sat snugly against his adam's apple. He stared Elizabeth down as the maids curtsied and left as quickly as they could. When he could be sure that they had indeed left, and were not just lingering right outside the chamber, he shut the door and bolted it.

"By Christ, I think you are the most beautiful woman I have ever seen," he said simply. Elizabeth hugged her elbows tighter, unsure of what to say. As her silence stretched on, Cromwell remarked: "Ah, the lady plays it coy with me. You can play the part of a shrinking violet, or an Amazon. I don't much care."

"Just feeling shy, that's all," she said quietly. Her stomach turned over on itself as Cromwell closed in on her. He ran a finger along the length of her collarbone, and leaned in, seeking a kiss on the lips. On reflex, Elizabeth lowered her head to dodge, and immediately wished she hadn't.

"You mean to make a beggar of your husband, make him beg for a kiss?" he asked, meaning it in jest, but unable to keep the menace fully out of his voice. Elizabeth shook her head. He cupped her cheeks and raised her chin. "Come now, Lissie," he implored. "Be sweet to me." He bent his head and kissed her softly at first, then harder as his desire rose. He left a trail of kisses from her chin, to her earlobe, and down to her throat. She sighed a little at that, the unexpected sensitivity she felt as his lips suckled at her neck.

"Be sweet to me," he said again. He brought his lips up to reclaim her mouth. This time his kiss was deep and moist, as his tongue sought hers. He groaned as she parted her lips and allowed him to flick his tongue against hers. He gripped her to him, and for the first time she could feel the hardness building between his legs. She thought about what Ursula told her: it would hurt. The anxiety of the pain caused her to break-off the kiss. He held her face in his hands, studying her intently. She could not bear to meet his gaze. So, she focused her eyes over his shoulders.

"Look at me," he said firmly. "Look at me with those big, beautiful eyes." Wanting to placate him in return for a little gentleness, Elizabeth obeyed and met his own vibrant eyes. In the soft light before the fire, they took on a soft green shade. "Lissie," he breathed. "I mean you no harm. It's all right. I won't hurt you, my dove."

He turned her around, so he could finish undressing her. He kissed her neck as he untied her underskirts. They fell to the floor in a soft hush. Cromwell ran his tongue along the rims of her ears. "Oh, God. Oh, God. It's been so long," he whispered. Unsure if he wanted a reply or some sort of acknowledgement, she decided to remain silent. His breathing picked up as he unlaced her stays. Elizabeth stood perfectly still as he loosened her stays and threw them to the side. He ran his hands up and down her shift, making out the curves of the body underneath—hidden from him by only a thin layer of cloth. He pulled her back against his chest, and his hips rubbed against her.

"I've wanted you for so long. I have been choking on my own desire for you," he said in between nips at her earlobe. He squeezed her breasts through the shift, and Elizabeth wished he would indeed choke on something: Thomas Cromwell assassinated by an errant olive pit.

Elizabeth had the sensation that she was running down a steep hill, and with every stride, the speed and the momentum made it impossible to stop herself. The inertia lurched on as Cromwell began tugging on the hem of her shift, lifting it over her head. Although she still wore her stockings, Elizabeth had never felt more naked in her life. Cromwell turned her to face him, and moaned at the sight of her.

"By God, I think you are the most beautiful creature I have ever seen," he swore. He stepped back and sank to his knees. He lightly ran his hands up and down her waist, over her buttocks, and finally rested his palms on her hips. He kissed her belly and lapped at her navel. His hands traveled down to her thighs and untied her garters so he could unroll her stockings. He gazed up at her, on his knees like a suppliant. "You were right. I don't even have the right to touch your hand, I don't deserve this kind of grace in my bed every night. "

Elizabeth tried to think of something appropriate to say at the most inappropriate occasion in her life. In vain, she wrapped her arms around her naked body. "I'm…I'm cold," she managed. "Can we not get in the bed?" Not exactly the song of the troubadours, but at least she spoke the truth. And the frankness of the statement broke Cromwell's trance because he nodded and gestured that she should crawl in to bed. A wave of relief washed over her as she scurried beneath the sheets and pulled the blankets over her nakedness. The relief was short lived; she could hear Cromwell kicking off his boots and dropping his breeches to the floor. I suppose I really will have to go through with this, Elizabeth thought sadly. She leaned back against the down stuffed pillows and tried to remain calm as Cromwell straddled her with both his legs. He pulled off his linen shirt last and tossed it to the side. In mute horror and fascination, Elizabeth could not help but brazenly stare at the first nude male body she had ever seen. Cromwell was wire thin, with taught muscles that reminded her of the king's greyhounds. His member stood straight as an arrow, pulsing with bluish veins. Elizabeth's throat closed up. He was bigger than she would have guessed he might have been.

He settled his weigh on top of her. Sensing her fear, he tried to reassure her to the extent that Thomas Cromwell could reassure any one. "Sssh, Lissie. It's all right. I love you. I won't hurt you." He kissed her lips, on the tip of her nose, and each of her closed eyelids. He sat back on his heels, wholly unconcerned with his nakedness. He took one of the pillows and propped it under her hips. He parted her knees and moved his thighs between them. With one hand, he gently grazed the soft pink flesh between her legs, spreading her open to him. He used his other hand to guide himself into her. At the shock of the penetration, Elizabeth yelped and dug her nails into his shoulders.

He put his lips to her ears. "Just relax. It's all right. Just breathe, my love." He groaned as he pushed himself deeper inside her. Elizabeth almost cried out again, but he silenced her with a deep kiss. "Hush, little dove. It's all right. Relax a little, it will make it easier for both of us." He eased Elizabeth back against the pillows, and allowed his full weight to rest on her. Ursula was right: no pleasure, only varying degrees of discomfort. As her muscles relaxed, the sharp pain of the penetration, and the sting of her flesh being torn, both subsided into a dull ache and uncomfortable pressure. She liked the sensation of his abdomen against hers, and the tickle of his chest hair on her smooth belly. Elizabeth nestled her chin over his shoulder, and ran her hands along his back, familiarizing herself with her husband's body. Every once in a while, her palm would glaze over a knotted scar, an old battle wound

His hips began to buck faster and faster, even though he was making an effort to restrain himself. He moaned and whimpered as his time drew near. Panting, he puts his lips to her ear. "I want you to look at me. I need you to always look at me when I am inside you, so I know you are not thinking of another man. Do you understand me? I need to hear you say my name, I need to hear it from your lips."

He propped himself up on his elbows, so he could look down at her. "Open your eyes. Open your eyes and say my name."

Elizabeth flushed so deeply that her cheeks felt fevered. But, she complied like a dutiful wife. She opened her eyes, softly said, "Thomas, Thomas." She peered up at Cromwell. His eyes were open, but he was so far gone in his pleasure that he could have been in India and not have noticed. Sweat from his forehead dripped on her, and for a terrible moment, Elizabeth feared she might sicken all over him.

"I want to hear you say it. I want you to tell me who took your maidenhead tonight." He fell to kissing her, every so often gasping: Oh, God. Oh, God it's been so long.

She buried her head against his neck and told him his own name, as he rode her hard. Elizabeth winced at the pain and dug her nails deeper into his shoulders. With a great shudder, he spilled himself into her. He collapsed on top her with his breath still ragged. She started to disengage herself from underneath him, but he rested his damp forehead on hers.

"Please," he begged. "Please let me stay like this, inside of you, for a little longer. I don't want to let you go, else I may lose you." His breathing deepened and leveled out; each of his exhales tickled her ear. She realized a few moments too late that he had fallen asleep. If another woman had told her that Cromwell had fallen asleep inside of her, she would have burst out laughing. But, Elizabeth did not feel like laughing at herself. At least not tonight. Maybe a month from now, she would laugh out loud. Cromwell, the exhausted lover, snoring softly on top of her? Ursula would laugh. Tom would laugh.

After what seemed an eternity, Elizabeth tried again to move Cromwell off of her. The tender flesh of her parts burned, and she wanted nothing more than to sit in a tub of cold water. Feeling her stir under him, Cromwell's eyes fluttered open. He murmured something about "not so awful now, was it?" He kissed her again, searching for her tongue with his. His kiss deepened as his member hardened again. Still half-asleep, his hips slowly began to thrust as he realized he was still inside of her. He did not break off kissing her until he shook again with his climax. Mercifully, this time he rolled off her, and Elizabeth heaved a sigh of relief at his weight finally cast off from her. Carefully, she sat up and pulled the bloodied pillow out from under her hips. Disgusted, she threw it to the side. Leave it for the maids to find in the morning. They could strut around with it tomorrow, telling the court, 'look what a ripe young virgin Lord Cromwell deflowered last night.' She did not realize how sore she was until she swung her legs around to get out of bed. Fighting back tears of embarrassment, she limped to the ewer of water set on a basin next to the bed. She soaked a rag in the cold water and gingerly cleaned the blood and Cromwell's seed off of her thighs. She held the cold rag between her legs for a moment and tried to make sense of what he had just done to her. Her eyes pricked with angry tears. It would have been better if he had just lifted her shift, and unbuckled his pants. That way, it would have been over soon: he would not have labored on top of her, sweating into her hair, so that now all she could smell were the cloves of his soap. Satisfied that she had cleaned herself enough for now, she picked her way over to the fireplace so she could pull her discarded shift back on.

When she crawled back into bed, she took care to disturb the mattress as little as possible. The last thing she wanted was to jar Cromwell awake and face another desperate act of love from him. So you see, Elizabeth told herself, you made it through today. Not as awful as it could have been, she supposed. She looked over at Cromwell. He was already deep in sleep, his usually stern face relaxed, probably dreaming about money and Lutherans. As she sank under the covers, Cromwell's hand fumbled out in the darkness, searching for hers. His fingertips found her own, and he folded his hand over hers.

Jarringly, Elizabeth realized that she could not just congratulate herself on a day's work well done, or write tonight off as an unpleasant expedition for the sake of the Seymours' ambitions. Oh my God, I am married to this man, she thought. I made it through tonight, but what about tomorrow night, and the night after that? This will be my life, Elizabeth thought bleakly. This will be my life: he will crawl between the sheets and sweat on top of me every night until I am fat with his child in my belly. I will have to call out his name and look him in the eyes as he mounts me.

A sob caught in her throat. She would wake up with the scent of their coupling in her hair every morning. This is what Edward, Tom, even Jane, had sold her into. They all knew they were not sending her into some arm's length transaction or expedient political marriage. Rather, they offered her up to satisfy Cromwell's lust, placate his appetite for while. None of them cared that she would have to pay the price night after night.

It all seemed so bleak that she could not breathe, could not think. Then, as she watched Cromwell's sleeping form, an idea wrapped itself around her like a warm blanket: he might die. He could die much sooner rather than later. The sweating sickness that had carried off his first wife and two younger daughters, might return for him. Or, maybe Cromwell would get tripped up in the very reign of fear that he had instituted. He might reap what he had sown, finding himself on the same executioner's block to which he had sent so many others.

He might die, she thought again.


	7. Chapter 7

Sir Francis Bryan hated waste. He hated courtiers who left half-finished glasses of wine strewn about. He hated the Church that would drape a cold statue of the Madonna in a priceless silk tunic, while beggars held their grubby palms out for alms in that same parish. And, he hated that the pinch-mouthed fox, Cromwell, married a woman like Elizabeth Seymour. Lissie was, well, she was a bit of a goer. Full, pink lips that she licked on purpose if she caught you looking at them. Giant blue eyes with heavy, seductive lashes. And, the most extraordinary color of hair he'd seen on a woman; he could not decide where the red ended and the honey color began. So, when he thought of Cromwell--always so impeccably groomed, impeccably polite—Cromwell with his hands in Lissie's blazing amber hair, Francis wanted break the Lord Privy Seal's nose. Like that scheming ferret would even know what to do with a woman like Lissie. Awful waste, Francis thought. Awful waste, those downy soft curves under the hands of a fucking clerk.

Now, as Cromwell strode towards him, freshly shaved and every button fastened, Francis concentrated on suppressing his rage. Indeed, Cromwell did not look like a man who had made merry last night, or a man that had made a woman moan under him. In fact, Cromwell appeared as he always did: fastidiously cleaned and dressed. Francis wondered if he did Cromwell too little credit; it was entirely possible that under his rich robes and tight collar, Thomas Cromwell was covered in the wounds of passion. Or, at least defensive wounds. But, Francis wagered it highly unlikely.

"Ah, Sir Francis. I have good news. The king has agreed to your appointment as a gentleman of the Privy Chamber," Cromwell smiled his sleek courtier's smile. The smile he gave everyone, whether you just got married, or he informed you that he was going to have to shut you away in the Tower for a spell.

"Well, I am sure I know who I have to thank for that," Sir Francis replied. Lately, it seemed no one got any post—scullery maid or Master of the Horse—without Cromwell's fingers in the pie somehow.

"I may have a job for you," Cromwell went on pleasantly. He put his hand on Francis's shoulder and guided him to a less crowded space in the great hall. "I need you to take this to the Lady Mary. See that she signs it." Cromwell pressed the innocuous scroll into Francis's hand. "The latest Act of Succession."

"Of course. Anything else?"

Cromwell leaned in. "Make sure that she fears me more than her God."

Francis watched his dark robes disappear into the crowd that enveloped him, everyone wanting something from him. Tucking his assignment into his doublet, Francis turned to leave. As he passed by Edward, standing in contemptuous silence with his wife, Anne Stanhope smiled seductively. Francis looked from Edward to Anne. Another fucking waste.

**

_She sits with Jane Boleyn. One by one, Master Cromwell makes his way through Queen Anne's ladies. Every once in a while, a sob from inside the room punctuates the silence that Elizabeth and Jane wait in. Jane's eyes, narrow as fish gills, stare straight ahead. It's so dark; Elizabeth wonders what Jane can possibly be looking for in such thick nothingness. No servants have passed by to light the candles as they burn down. In the dwindling flickers of their flame, Elizabeth can hear a shout, a thud, and then Madge's pitiful sobbing. _

_ "This is the queen's doing," Jane Boleyn says into the nothingness. "She has summoned a witch upon her brother, upon his majesty."_

_ Elizabeth fidgets on the bench. She holds out her ivory brocade slipped feet in front of her. As the wick of the candle surrenders to the dark, she can just make out the pal e of her shoes against the blackness. She thinks, the dark is so heavy, so muggy, no wonder I was afraid of it as a child. The last of the candles die, and she and Jane Boleyn can do nothing except inhale the darkness. Behind the heavy oak door, Cromwell and Rich shout at Madge, and she squeals like a sow_

_**_

Elizabeth gasped awake from her dream. All she could remember was choking on the night, thick as fog coming off the Thames. Trembling, she brought her hand to her forehead, and then to her throat. Her pulse thumped so hard and fast, she worried it might rip her neck apart, but she was still alive. In the dream, she was certain of her death. As she smoothed her hair back, damp with sweat, she held her breath in order to level it out again.

Elizabeth sat up in the big bed, and reoriented herself. Cromwell was long gone, his clean soap smell the only evidence he'd been with her at all. A bloodied pillow lay carelessly next to the bed. Oh, that, Elizabeth thought. She ached deep inside, while at the same time, her delicate inner thighs smarted. She pulled the sheets up and peered between her legs cautiously. Mortified, she saw a small pool of bright fresh blood pooled between her legs and seeping through her linen shift. Elizabeth almost choked on her own disgust with herself. Why was she still bleeding? Was that normal? Was a bloodstained nightgown and pillow the last thing Cromwell saw before taking his leave of her this morning? Elizabeth wondered if it was possible to die of shame and embarrassment. Blindly, she fumbled around for something to wrap around her shoulders, so she could exit the bed with a last shred of dignity. She yanked a fur pelt around her torso.

Everything hurt. Was this normal? She wondered again. Deep within her abdomen, a dull pain like that of a bruise persisted. Her innermost, tender flesh stung like one rug burn on top of another. Clutching the fur around her, Elizabeth limped to the large embrasure. Curling around herself, her memory of the night before came to her in reluctant bits and pieces: the slap of his thighs against hers, the drip-drop of his sweat on to her body, and worst of all, his moist breath in her ear as he claimed he did this to her because he loved her.

Cromwell had her three times last night. The third time, right before the dawn overtook the dark, she was almost asleep. For half the night, Cromwell had slept soundly on top of her long hair, so that any movement he made sent a sharp shock to her scalp. Just as exhaustion was about to win over the discomfort and allow her to sleep, he turned her flat on her back. His hands parted her knees. "Lissie, I know you're awake," he told her. "Open those pretty eyes and be sweet to your husband."

Afterwards, she did not bother to wash again. She simply tucked her shift between her legs and hugged a pillow to her. Her muscles did not relax until she heard him get up from the bed and wash himself. When she heard him shut the door behind him, her body gave out, and she slept like a newborn.

Now, as she wrapped herself into the furs, she rested her forehead against the cool pane of glass. She pushed the window open and inhaled deeply the notes of honeysuckle already in the cool morning air. Elizabeth scrunched her eyes shut, so that she would not have to see the maids as they came in to strip the soiled bed sheets. Without opening her eyes, she said, "I need my bath. Someone fetch the tub. I don't care if the water is cold, I just need my bath."

**

Robert Aske burrowed his chin into his furs. He shivered like a wet dog. Perhaps because June had been unseasonably cool in the North. Perhaps because the world had proved to be a colder place than he would have thought. Shivering again, he watched the smoke rise high above Sawley Abbey. The beautiful building, exalting learning and God's love, was being sacked by Cromwell's greed. A lump rose in Aske's throat as he heard the wild cries of young men running through the sacred house, stripping everything beautiful they could find.

He turned to find John Constable clambering towards him, making his way over the boulders to where he and Aske often met. "Mr. Aske," John said quietly. In silence, the two men watched the smoke billow higher over the rolling green hills.

"Look. Look what they've done John. Just look." Aske could not tear his eyes away from the defilement unfolding before them.

"It's all Cromwell's doing!" John spat: he lacked Aske's education and worldliness. "Cromwell and that sect of heretics in London. The bastards!" His voice began quaver. Eyes bright with tears, John turned to Aske, saying angrily: "I tell you this, Mr. Aske: the people. They're no longer willing to stand by and watch their faith and everything that they care for being _stripped _away. I heard just yesterday that two of Cromwell's commissioners were attacked. In Lincolnshire. And in Yorkshire. One of the commons stood up in his own church and said go away and follow the crosses, for when they are taken from us, we can follow them no more."

Aske, overwhelmed, said, "What am I supposed to do, John?"

John became stoic with purpose. "The Commons, here. In Lincolnshire. They are prepared to fight, to save what they love. But, they need captains. They need learned men. Clever, educated men to lead them."

"John, I'm no leader," Aske said shaking his head. John pounded his fist into his palm.

"Damn it, Aske! What are you waiting for? Haven't you heard the latest foul gossip from London? That Lutheran devil, Cromwell, has taken the queen's sister as his bride! How much time do you think we can afford to waste when Cromwell takes a royal bride to wed and to bed? You honestly think the Seymours will stand our friends if they sold that sweet girl to a messenger of Satan. They will do whatever they have to save their own skins. We true Catholics are on our own."

Aske tore his eyes from destruction of Sawley Abbey. He met John's panic stricken gaze. "The queen's sister? Lissie Seymour?" Aske demanded. He remembered little Lissie when she was just the child-bride of an ancient Northern earl. Bored out of her wits in cold, primitive Yorkshire, she would race down to greet him when he came to help her husband transact legal business. Have you brought me any more books, Mr. Aske? Will you look over my Latin and French translations? She would trot after him like an eager puppy. As a teenager, Lissie was pretty as a doll. As a mature woman, he could only imagine the beauty she'd grown into.

"It's not enough that Cromwell has to rape the Madonna, must he also defile good English girls, like her?" Aske said after a while. "But, John, this is just wild speculation. His Majesty, God save the king, would never allow that heretic to marry so close to the throne that he could take it." Aske tried to reassure himself. John shook his head, as if to say, You honestly think that a king, who drove two wives to an early grave, is capable of such rational calculation?

"Like I said," John reiterated, "they need good men to lead them. You don't have to decide now. We'll call a meeting. Then decide."

Both men fell silent, watching helplessly as one of the jewels of Northern England was pillaged for Cromwell's greed. As John looked on at the destruction, quietly, to himself, he whispered, "For the love of God."

**

After Elizabeth took a cold bath, she pulled on a clean muslin shift and returned to her perch on the window embrasure. Alice had tried to help her dress, but Elizabeth only slapped her hands away. "If you want to make yourself useful, then go find my brothers. Tell them I am unwell and will speak with them tomorrow. I don't want to see anyone today. Anyone. Understand?" she growled at Alice.

"At least eat a little something," Alice tried to soothe her mistress, although in truth she had no idea why her lady should be so cross. "Some mulled wine?" Alice offered eagerly.

"Just some mulled wine and some bread. My guts can't handle much else beyond that." She stared out the window pane. Through the mottled glass, she could just make out Cromwell's dark hair and dark robes as he walked next to broader figure of the king. She pushed the window open a little further, and could hear Henry's laughter. She would know it anywhere: the way he chuckled deeply at first, but became more nasally as his amusement continued. Every courtier worth their salt could pick the king's laughter out from the whole of London. She'd never heard Cromwell laugh, though.

Once the bed had been stripped and remade with clean sheets and furs, Elizabeth left the window and pulled the sheets tight around her, as she brought her knees up to her chin. She wiped away a few errant tears with the sleeve of her shift. Like a child, she longed for the comfort of her older sister, or at least a trusted friend like Ursula. After all, Elizabeth had sat up with Jane after the queen's wedding night. She brushed her sister's hair and fed her honey cakes: the comfort of women to one another. Not that Jane had a bad go of it the first time Henry had her. It was just that Jane was so painfully modest and devout, that the conjugal rights had left her bewildered. Lucky for Jane, after the last queen, Henry loved a shy, unsure wife.

Elizabeth pulled the sheets over her head and breathed in deeply the smell of lavender and sage. More than anything, she wanted to rest her head in Ursula's lap and tell her everything. Especially all the awful, dirty, embarrassing things Cromwell would whisper in her ear as he neared climax. Did all men say those sorts of things? Did all men try to kiss the tuft of fur between a woman's legs? Mostly, she wanted to ask Ursula how in the world she was supposed to learn to enjoy Cromwell sweating on top of her, pounding into her.

She thought about what Ursula told her: the best a woman can hope for is man who does not _want _it to hurt. She clutched her rosary so hard that it cut in the thin skin of her palm. Cromwell tried to be gentle. But he waxed and waned like the moon. When it suited him to be tender, then he was mild as a lamb. With a shudder, she remembered that terrifying night, as he hurled vile accusations about Queen Anne and threw Elizabeth around like a rag-doll. Those bruises took weeks to heal fully. Her face was still a little yellowed and tender even when at Jane's wedding. She feared for the night when it no longer suited him to be tender. At the small crack of thunder, Elizabeth peered out from the sheets. Edward had been right; the storm would break over their heads today.

**

Cromwell sat at his desk, pushing around papers, but accomplishing nothing. He had just been walking with the king in the gardens before the rain drove them back to the palace, cutting short their walk. He desperately needed to find out how much Henry really knew about what was going on up North. Henry, being Henry, said nothing about politics. Instead, he wanted to walk with his minister and laugh at his own bawdy jokes: Oh, Thomas—look at you! Nary a hair out of place—wager we cannot say the same for little Lissie, eh? In fairness to the king, just when Cromwell was about to fully write him off as a lusty, witless prince, Henry would make a quick, brilliant decision—and then go about flirting with the ladies and playing at bowls. The trouble with Henry was that he could be angry with you for half a year, and you would not know until he sent the Tower Guard to arrest you. Henry could parcel out his rage over time, saving it for when he needed to make an example of someone, anyone.

Did the king know how quickly things had fallen apart (literally overnight) in the North? Judging from the way Edward and Tom Seymour smirked at the Privy Council, both of those tow-headed schemers knew. But, they just smiled between themselves, saying nothing. Cromwell suspected their discretion had nothing to do with protecting their new brother-in-law, and more to do with the fact that they just wanted to hear the news--hear Cromwell have to tell the king publicly-- that his first minister, his favorite minister, had made a mistake of massive proportions. His quill hovered over the parchment as tried to put words the dawning disaster, such that Henry would act swiftly, but not in such a way that would send Cromwell to the block.

He'd only made one stroke of a letter when he was interrupted by the clatter of two men running full-speed into his offices. Such was the urgency, they ran straight to him, rather than request permission to speak with him from one of his secretaries.

"My lord! My lord! We have come here in great haste to tell you that a great part of the North, as well as parts of Lincolnshire, have risen in sudden rebellion against His Majesty!" the bearded man exclaimed, out of breath. Cromwell breathed deeply: small chance now of keeping things quiet when the man had just shouted the news so that all of Whitehall could hear. He closed his eyes, parsing through the information. He turned and gestured that the commissioners should follow him to a place where they could speak in more privacy.

"There are musters of the commons everywhere, and beacons of rebellion everywhere burning across the hills. Just weeks ago, when we were collecting taxes in Hexham, we were set upon by an angry mob. Pulled the man, Nicholas Bellow down from his horse and beat him to death," the older man reported.

"Among the mob, my lord, we saw armed priests, urging on these rebellious knaves with cries of 'Kill them! 'Kill them!'" the other man chimed in.

Cromwell stood, perfectly composed without even blinking. "And what do these rebels say that they want?" He already knew.

"So far as I can tell, they want to keep their holidays," the older man answered. Oh, right, the damn holidays. Cromwell ground his teeth: the feast days, yet again. "They want the monasteries restored, their churches unmolested, no more taxes," his commissioner continued. As he caught his breath, the other commissioner went on.

"I have heard it said that if they prospered with their journey, they intended to kill you, Lord Cromwell, 4 or 5 bishops, and Chancellor Rich…"--at that Rich blanched—"… as devisers of taking down churches and church goods."

"But, but why do the local gentry not intervene and suppress these traitorous assemblies?" Rich asked. Inwardly, Crowell rolled his eyes. Why do you think, blockhead? Because there are tens of thousands of rebels and just a few dozen lords.

"Surely they want to protect their lands and their holdings?" Rich continued on being stupidly obvious, much to Cromwell's irritation. A man with less self-control would shout at Rich like he was an inept schoolboy: because the gentry either tacitly support the uprising, or are openly encouraging the revolt.

"They try, but the rebels come back in greater numbers." The commissioners turned desperately to Cromwell. "Some say not hundreds, but thousands have risen in rebellion."

Cromwell stood with glacial like stillness. The three men all stared at him as if he could just snap his fingers and set everything to rights. He turned around and left all three of them, still waiting for Thomas Cromwell to come up with a brilliant plan off the top of his head. Out of habit, he grabbed his leather dossier and clutched it to him. As if that would shield him from the king's rage. Long ago, Wolsey once told him that if he hoped to rise in the king's service, then he had better get used to being a sop for Henry's anger. "You're going to have to steel yourself, my dear Cromwell," Wolsey had told him. "Fix your feet and your courage to the sticking place. Because, when the king's rage breaks over your head, there's nothing quite like it."

"Where are you going?" Rich called after him.

**

Henry's bright blue-green eyes flashed with anger. "Why didn't you know?" he demanded. Henry stalked towards Cromwell menacingly, Cromwell furrowed his dark brows and stared blankly ahead. He did not budge an inch. Henry threw up his hands. "You're supposed to know everything that goes on here!" Frustrated at Cromwell's lack of responsiveness, Henry paced around him like a lion about to go in for the kill. "You _told_ me there was little opposition. Quite the contrary. You told me that most people were glad to see such places dissolved." Henry leaned in close to his impassive minister and hissed: "You were wrong." He started to walk away, but turned around. "You didn't know _anything_!" Henry yelled and slapped Cromwell so hard across the back of the head that the crack reverberated through the chamber. "Knave!" he spat. "Sit down, write this."

Cromwell sat down while Henry paced, smoothing back his hair to collect himself. The actual substance of what the king was saying passed in one ear and out the other. Cromwell went into dictation mode, thinking only about getting the words onto the vellum, and not the meaning of them. He bit hard into his cheeks to keep his teeth from chattering with shock. A lesser man would have cried out at the force of Henry's blow. But, between his violent father, and the Italian wars, Cromwell had already served a brutal apprenticeship in how to take a blow. As he wrote, he prayed too. Prayed that Henry would not turn against him. Prayed that he would survive this day long enough to crawl between the sheets of his bed and hold Elizabeth in his arms.

After what seemed an eternity, Henry dismissed him. Back in his own offices, Cromwell drained a glass of unwatered wine to settle his nerves. He could not let his clerks, his commissioners see his fear. Fear was so contagious that even a whiff of Cromwell's uncertainty in Cromwell could drive his men to abandon ship. Drive his men to seek the shelter of that pig, Charles Brandon. As his hands steadied from the wine, Cromwell dipped his quill and began to write. He heard Rich's clumsy feet stomp in, but he did not bother to look up.

"I am writing to the gentry of Yorkshire, reminding them of their duty to suppress these traitors," he explained in order to forestall Rich's questions. "and the penalties of not doing so." Cromwell glanced up, a bit of a gleam in his eye at the thought of kicking his responsibility in the whole mess down the line.

Rich cleared his throat uncomfortably. "Is there any case for…for suspending the work of the Church Commissioners?" At that Cromwell stared at Rich, wide-eyed and stunned that Rich would question him, question the Reformation.

Cromwell's face blackened. "Until the rebels have the kings authority beaten into their heads…" his voice trembled with indignation at Rich questioning his superior's judgment. "This is the only way to show them that the king intends to continue with the reformation of the corruption of religion—whatever they say, whatever they do," Cromwell snarled. An uncomfortable silence settled between them, only to be interrupted by another commissioner running for Cromwell. Sensing the tension in the room, the man was not sure if he ought to speak, so he loudly cleared his throat.

"Yes!?" Cromwell said, exasperated. He took in the commissioner's wide eyes and shallow frightened breathing. Nothing else to do but ask this greasy man what more had gone wrong in the last hour.

**

As Elizabeth slept and awoke during the day, a Bible sized stack of notes had accumulated at her bedside. Sitting up, she started at the bottom of the stack and read through each of the notes chronologically. The first dozen were from Edward, demanding to know why she was not up and attending on her sister the queen. Edward did not give himself short shrift either: another ten notes demanded an answer as to why she rebuffed his requests for a visit. Why would she not let Tom see her? Didn't she have the slightest clue what was going on? Her husband had truly unmade himself today, wasn't that pleasing? Now, could she please do her duty by her family and see them.

At least Jane took a less heavy handed approach: Oh, Lissie. I am so worried, but I dare not put it to words. Oh, Lissie, I need to see you. Oh, Lissie, you are the only one I can talk to. Oh, by the way, your maids said you are sick to your guts. So, I've sent a tisane with basil, mint, and rosemary leaves. Elizabeth was about to toss all the papers into the fire without responding to them when one fell out of the middle of the stack. Immediately, Elizabeth recognized Cromwell's straight, flawless lettering. She broke the seal and read the contents.

_Lissie, _

_The situation is precarious, and I fear no matter what I do will end in folly. Search your heart: however I have wronged you, believe me I am the sorrier for it. I need you to stand as my friend, not just my wife. Please, do not forsake me now. Speak to the queen on my behalf, for I have marred everything. _

_Your steadfast and loving husband,_

_Thomas_

The desperation of the note gave Lissie pause. If Cromwell intended her--still sore and raw from his attentions last night--to run to Jane and plead leniency, then he would have to wait until the morning when Elizabeth hoped to be fully recovered. Not that it was physically impossible for her to dress and make her way to the queen's rooms. Just highly uncomfortable and embarrassing. Deep down, she could not help but resent Cromwell recruiting her to use as human shield for his miscalculation. The thought of his hiding between her Seymour name and her skirts made her taste bile. Nonetheless, she had to wonder how bad things were if Cromwell actually had to come out and ask for help.

She waited up for him, with a cup of mulled wine at the ready for when he returned to their rooms. As midnight came and went, she gave up and went to bed. The shift in the weight of mattress awoke her a few hours later. She sat up a bit.

"I take it the spice wine was left for me," Cromwell said, his naked back to her as he kicked off his boots and unlaced his breeches. "It was cold."

"Sorry. I thought you would come to bed sooner," Elizabeth said sheepishly.

"You did not wait on the queen today?" he asked, but it came out more as a statement.

"I was…," Elizabeth searched for a tactful filler. "I was unwell."

At that, Cromwell laughed bitterly. "And I in much better shape after today?" He yanked the coverlets over his naked body. "I asked you to do one thing, one thing, Lissie. And you could not even stop thinking about yourself long enough to do that. You're more useless than Lord Suffolk."

Elizabeth's ears burned with the reprimand. She said nothing.

"If I am ruined over this, I will be sure to drag you and your family down with me. So, madame, I suggest you avail yourself to the queen tomorrow," Cromwell said into the darkness. He lay on his side, with his pale shoulder blades facing her.

Elizabeth settled back against the pillows. "I meant no malice," she whispered. "I'm sorry."

He turned towards her, his pale eyes standing out in the dark of the room. "You serve me. You are my wife. You are mine. You do not answer to your brothers, or even your sister. You answer to me, only me. Understand?" She nodded minutely her acknowledgement. Satisfied that he'd upbraided her enough, he reached out to smooth her hair away from her eyes. He pulled her to him. "Now, come here and be sweet to your husband."


	8. Chapter 8

_When Jane Boleyn sails out of the room with Richard Rich on her arm, she raises her brows at Elizabeth. Elizabeth searches her face for an answer, any answer. But, Jane's smooth, oval face is a blank slate, ready to write and rewrite whatever story you could possibly want. Elizabeth catches Rich's robe as he passes._

_ "Master Rich, could you please ask someone to bring in some candles?" she asks. Before Rich answers, Jane laughs. Its echo is so inappropriate amidst the solemn lies they have been called upon to tell, that Rich just stares at Jane incredulously._

_ "Still afraid of the dark, Lissie?" Jane laughs again, snickering to herself. "Don't you know that at least in the dark you can't even see your own shadow? Can't see your shadow, can't be afraid of it then." She can hear Jane giggle down the long corridor, as Rich guides her. Elizabeth wonders what would happen if she simply left, finding her own way out of the dark._

_ Out of poor habit, she gnaws her at fingernails. Too quiet. Too dark. Jane's mockery might be the only truth spoken here today: Elizabeth is still afraid of the dark. She still falls asleep with a candle burning at her bedside, despite constant warnings that she will alight herself like a witch at the stake. _

_ "You," Cromwell says sharply. He pokes his head around the door._

_ "Me?" Elizabeth realizes how plaintive and whiny she just sounded. _

_ "Yes, you. Who else is left?" he demands tersely. "Follow me." His pale eyes and face are the only distinguishable features in the dim, dim light. He holds a candle in his right hand. Out of the blackness, he offers her his left hand, palm up. She places her skeptical white hand in his. _

_ "Are we going someplace else? Are we not going to stay in this room?" she squeaks. _

_ "Didn't I just tell you to follow me?" he tuts. He raises her up from her seat. He still has her small hand tucked into his. She follows him, not because she wants to, but because he is the one with the candle. So, she trails after him, following the light. First one step, then another. And, now it is too late to turn back. She follows him. Because she has to. _

**

Elizabeth startled herself awake again. In the dream, she kept telling herself to wake up, that if she could wake up, then she would be free of the darkness. Now, she opened her eyes to the grey light of very early morning. She breathed with relief as she held her hands out in front her, taking comfort in the scant light that illuminated their shape. She turned to see if Cromwell was still in bed, or if he had kept to his usual punishing regimen. Unfortunately, he still lay tangled in the sheets, sprawled out over most of the mattress. She smiled. Elizabeth could scarcely believe that she would actually see the sun come in before Thomas Cromwell. Careful as a surgeon, she delicately rolled herself out of bed, trying not to wake him. Her insides still ached, and the tears to her sensitive pink flesh made her wince as she tried to quietly wash. She flinched at the cold water as she stood in the basin, scrubbing under her arms and between her legs. Before pulling her shift over her head, she poured a little rose water onto a cloth and ran it over her torso and under her breasts, so she could mute his scent on her.

As she fumbled her way to her chest where she kept her stays and gowns, she hazarded a glance to be sure Cromwell was still asleep. His chest rose and fell, fell and rose. He appeared to be off and dreaming about money counters and conspiracies. She kept an eye on the bed while she wrapped her stays around her, albeit facing the wrong way, so that she could lace them up without having to get one of the maids. She thrust her hand in her wardrobe chest and pulled out the first underskirt she grabbed hold of. At the rustle of the stiff fabric, Cromwell stirred a little. She held her breath. She did know how much more she could take of his hands on her body, his desperate pleas for her to tell him that she loved him as he mounted her. The gentler he became, the more he tried to pleasure her, and the sicker Elizabeth felt afterwards. She was afraid to trust his tenderness at face value. She feared his kindness only masked a coming storm, and every caress alarmed her of danger lurking somewhere in his dark eyes.

For the time being, Cromwell continued to sleep, and she was free of his hands, his lips, his tongue. Elizabeth fished around in her chest for one of the few gowns she had which did not need to be laced up the back. Finally, she found one that she could just slip over her head. She shimmied the gown over her arms and shoulders by way of doing a little hopping dance. She decided she could just comb out her plaited hair once she got to the queen's rooms and maybe borrow one of Jane's hoods. She knelt to pick up the pair of shoes she kicked off last night. With the heels in her hands, she tiptoed across the room to the door of the bedchamber.

"Are you honestly going to sneak off without giving your husband a kiss good-morning?"

At the sound of Cromwell's voice, still raspy from sleep, Elizabeth slumped a bit over the bolt of the door. Part of her dearly wanted to tell him that yes, she was going to leave him unkissed, that she would not be sweet to him this morning. Then she remembered his warning last night: if he fell, then he would take the Seymours with him. For Jane's sake, and Jane's sake alone, Elizabeth would appease Cromwell.

"I didn't want to wake you," she said over her shoulder. "You never sleep as it is." There. That hinted wifely concern, didn't it?

He extended a peremptory arm, beckoning her to him. Elizabeth put down her shoes and went to him. He pulled her to sit next to him on the bed.

"Your hair looks a mess."

"My sister will help me brush it out."

"Your sister is the queen. The queen does not groom her own ladies," he observed.

She shrugged. "My sister is my sister. Crown or not."

"Why did you lace your stays backwards? I would have helped you if you would have asked." He planted a kiss on each of her shoulders.

"I thought you were asleep," she reiterated. Apparently not, apparently he had been watching her the entire time.

"I never sleep." He smoothed her hair, tucking a loose strand behind her ear. "I was harsh with you last night," he conceded. "And, I am sorry for it. But, Lissie, a wife serves her husband before she serves her own family. And you can start by putting me into the queen's good graces." He kissed her hand.

"The queen wants to stay out of this, I am sure," Elizabeth said firmly. "She barely needs any more reminding from his majesty about what happened to the last wife who tried to intercede in the king's affairs." She knew she had to please her husband, but she did not want to have to risk Jane to do it.

"I can only imagine how marvelously well your family would have ascended had I decided not to 'intercede in the king's affairs.'" Not even dawn, and already Cromwell's voice developed an edge to it.

"I will do my best," Elizabeth relented. She got up to leave. She unbolted the door, but he called after her.

"Lissie!"

Halfheartedly, she turned around.

"What about my kiss?" He had his generous smile in place in which his lips ticked up, but no other muscles flickered. Cromwell's generous smile was not really generous, because he never did anything for free, never gave out charity.

"Oh. Right. Sorry about that," she bumbled. About to comply, instead she decided to push the heavy door open and walk on.

**

Jane sat at her vanity, head down, and hair spilling over her face, wheat colored waterfall. At the sound of her bed chamber door opening, Jane cleared her long hair out of her face.

"Who is it?" she asked pleasantly. She tried so hard to be pleasant to everyone. She tried to please everyone.

When Elizabeth's strawberry blonde head poked around, Jane dropped all pretenses. She held her hands out for her sister. She let Elizabeth see her tear stained face.

"Where were you? I needed you yesterday! I needed you last night." Jane sounded more sad than angry.

"I'm sorry. I had a…" Elizabeth did not know how to finish the sentence. "I had a bad go of it," she managed. Jane's mild eyes widened in sympathy.

"Oh, Lissie, he wasn't cruel to you, was he? Did he hurt you very terribly? He didn't—" Jane cut herself off and looked at Elizabeth. "Lissie, why are you carrying your shoes instead of wearing them? And where are your stockings, for shame?"

Elizabeth suddenly became aware of her bare, cold feet. In spite of herself, she laughed. Jane brightened and giggled too. "I was trying to escape my jailer in the Tower by tip-toeing to freedom," Elizabeth said with forced cheerfulness.

Jane laughed again. "And did you escape undetected?"

"Unfortunately not. May it please my sister the queen that I borrow a pair of stockings?" Elizabeth reached up and tugged at her matted braid. "And, a hood, if you can spare one." Jane jerked her head over to one of her many wardrobe chests, the small one that sealed her stays, chemises, and stockings in the clean, woody smell of cedar. As Elizabeth searched for a properly matched pair of stockings, Jane caught her up on everything she'd missed yesterday. Edward's wife, Anne Stanhope, would be living with him at court from now on, bringing with her forbidden French fashions and her most unfortunate sneer.

" The king has not sought my bed since two days before your wedding. He will not speak to me when we dine," Jane said suddenly.

With her head shoved half-way in the clothes chest, Elizabeth replied, "He just has his mind on other things. He's so troubled with the uprising in the North." To herself, Elizabeth did not believe that explanation for a moment; Cromwell knew that Yorkshire was careening towards unholy rebellion a full week before the king did, and that knowledge had done nothing to slake the Lord Privy Seal's appetite.

Jane must have been thinking the same thing, because with uncharacteristic bluntness, she told Elizabeth: "If trouble in the North really sent men running from our beds, then you would be in far better shape then you are now." Jane stared down at her hands in her lap. "He isn't looking at me. He just looks past me to Ursula Misseldon. And, yesterday, she could not hand me anything without flushing and trembling."

Elizabeth settled on a pair of pale blue stockings. She held them up, with a pair of pink garter ribbons, to seek Jane's approval. Her sister nodded in agreement. Elizabeth pulled the stockings up over her knees and tied them in place with the satin ribbon. She knew Jane was waiting for a response, but what could she possibly tell her sister that would change the ugly fact that the king had already sniffed out a new mistress. Was she to lie to the queen, her own sister? Say that the king would never forsake his queen, only a month or so into their marriage? Elizabeth just let the silence explain what she herself did not want to have to admit. Once she buckled her shoes, Elizabeth gathered Jane's long hair and began to brush it with long, even strokes. A few tears snaked down Jane's face, but she closed her eyes and gave herself over to the comfort of her sister brushing her hair.

"How could I be so stupid? How could I think he would be any different with me? I remember when Katherine was queen. I remember my heart breaking for her, and wondering how she could go on, watching Henry chase Mary Boleyn, then Anne," Jane said quietly. "He does not see me. He just looks to see if my belly has grown at all."

"Jesus, Mary, and Joseph!" Elizabeth swore. "You've only been married for a little over a month. He cannot possibly expect you to be with child already?"

"How am I get a Prince of Wales if he is in my ladies' beds more than he is in mine?" Jane moaned. I don't know, Elizabeth thought. Pity we cannot ask Anne Boleyn. "How long do I have? How long can I hold onto his love if I don't give him a son?" Jane went on. Again, Elizabeth thought: pity we cannot ask Anne Boleyn.

Laughing at herself, Jane wiped the tears away with the back of her hand. "And, I have angered the king by asking after the Lady Mary again. I asked him if I could visit her, or send her a gift—like one of your etchings, Lissie. All the king said was, 'remember your predecessor.' He is cross with me—told me my coronation must be postponed because there is plague in the city. Come now Lissie, you know that if there were really plague in London, the king would have us fleeing to Edinburgh. So, now for certain he will not be seeking my bed."

"My husband has been perpetually cross with me since the moment I met him. But I think it may be his particular brand of seduction: he treats me to a serenade of what a disappointment I have been, threatens my family and me, then begs me to love him. It's like a three act play," Elizabeth remarked, one reproved wife to another. She twisted Jane's hair into a circlet. "Come to think of it, Lord Cromwell is most keen for me when he is angriest with me." She smoothed down the front of Jane's hair. "So, maybe you won't have to sleep alone for long."

As Jane gazed impassively at her own reflection in the vanity mirror, Elizabeth rested her chin on Jane's shoulder, taking in their similarities, the dissimilarities of sisters.

"We have to stop this," Jane said after a while.

"Stop what?"

"Stop all this crying. Look at us, puffy and haggard looking from tearing up over every bad-tempered glare our husbands give us. We keep this up, and they shall toss us aside for becoming hideous."

Elizabeth smiled. "Pray God he tosses me aside to parts unknown."

Jane twisted around in her chair. "Be reasonable, Lissie. You can tell Lord Cromwell has known very little kindness in his life. I suppose he tries to give you the best of him that is still there. You might try to reciprocate, even a little bit. He likes you. I can tell by the way his jaw would tighten up when he would see you talking to another man." Elizabeth hesitated, unsure of how much to tell Jane. She wanted to tell Jane that last night Cromwell had threatened their lives, and then went on kiss her between her legs—all in a single minute.

"It's very difficult to be intimate with someone that unpredictable," Elizabeth said tactfully. The last thing Elizabeth wanted was for Jane to endanger herself again by going to the king directly. And, God forbid, the king actually saying something in passing to Cromwell. With a Catholic uprising underway, Cromwell would not need much more ammunition to proceed against the Papist Seymours. Then again, for better or for worse, most of England blamed Cromwell for the North exploding. So, Cromwell and the Seymours were going to have smile and dance on, hand in hand.

Jane shrugged out of dressing gown and opened her arms wide so Elizabeth could lace her into her stays. "I'm just saying, Lissie, you could try to gentle him. I know he is twice your age, but, he is still a handsome man. It's not as if Edward married you off to an ogre."

Elizabeth gritted her teeth. She was on the verge of saying something cruel and underhanded to Jane. Oh really, Jane? She thought. Well why don't you write some sonnets to Cromwell on my behalf? Ah, that's right: you cannot even read or write. Summoning her composure, and suppressing her indignation, she said, "But, Jane, there's violence in him. You saw the bruises I came back to Chelsea with. He knew you were going to be the next queen of England, but that did not stop him from slamming my face into a table. I am not being unreasonable when I tell you that I do not want to love him, or that I do not want to make him happy. I just want to give him a baby, so he will leave me alone."

"Just keep him happy, Lissie. He knows I want to restore the Lady Mary to the succession, and he knows we are Papists. If ever he wanted to be rid of the Seymours, I think a Catholic uprising would be just the time to do it." Jane sank back in her chair, resigned.

"He needs us too," Elizabeth said stubbornly, unready to fully yield to the force that was Cromwell. "The king has never been this angry with him before. He begged me to intercede with you on his behalf, that you might speak well of him to the king."

Jane snickered. "Right, the Papist queen is supposed to rescue the Lutheran evangelical from a bed of his own making." She drew herself up to her full height. "The king warned me once about meddling in his affairs. I am not as dim as everyone thinks I am; I know that Anne Boleyn did not expire of a head cold. If I am to stretch my neck out for anyone, it will be for the innocent: the wives and children of the rebels who must suffer the king's terrible retribution, or discarded, lonely girls like the Ladies Mary and Elizabeth." She nodded her firmly, as if to affix her seal on the proclamation she had just made. "Now, fetch my pink gown. I want to wear it again."

Elizabeth curtsied to her sister the queen.

**

Sir Francis strutted over to Cromwell like a man with a secret that he might, or might not share with you. Cromwell raised a single eyebrow—a habit he did when he waited for people to explain themselves to him.

"Signed. Sealed. Delivered." Francis handed a small folded piece of paper to Cromwell. His thick brows furrowed as he recognized the seal immediately: Mary Tudor. He tore open the seal and his eyes shot up to Francis's grin.

"She signed the Act of Succession," Francis confirmed. Cromwell had seen too much in his life to be surprised, but this was one of those rare occasions of astonishment.

"What, did you put her to the rack?" Cromwell was only half-joking.

Francis cackled. "God, no. I simply relied on my tender touch with the ladies and charming seduction." Again, Cromwell gave one of his distinctive single eyebrow raises. Francis took the liberty of clapping the Lord Privy Seal on the shoulder. "I told that pious shrew that if it were up to me, I would bash her head into the wall until it was as soft as boiled apples."

"You are to words what Master Holbein is to paint," Cromwell replied drily. Inwardly, he had to admire the lyrical quality of the threat: so illustrative, so visceral. His clerks would sicken themselves with laughter when they heard it. He could only imagine the iterations they would come up with to banter amongst themselves: fetch my that quill, or I shall smash you face until it is as soft as a baked pear. Don't hog all the ink, else I may crush your face until it is softer than a rotten peach.

Francis reached out for the Lady Mary's submission. "Shall I take this to his Majesty?"

Cromwell folded the paper and placed it in his doublet. "You need not worry yourself with such clerical administration. I will see to it that his Majesty receives it." The two men bowed to each other politely, but once Cromwell's back turned around, Francis scowled. As the bearer of good news, Cromwell would directly benefit from the king's pleasure—and take all the credit. Francis thought it no small feat to threaten the granddaughter of Isabelle and Ferdinand. He doubted a low-born smithee like Cromwell would have had the guts to look Mary Tudor in the eyes and accomplish what Francis had just done.

Cromwell walked briskly towards the king's privy chamber. Adroitly, he wove his way through the mass of courtiers waving petitions in his face. Normally, he paused to take their requests under advisement. But, with things unraveling so quickly in the North, he needed to deliver a good piece of news, any good piece of news to Henry. Show the king that his favorite hound may have lost the scent yesterday, but that he had picked up entirely new quarry.

Mary's submission almost made him forget Elizabeth's latest rejection of him earlier that morning: he only wanted a kiss from those plump lips. But, Lissie found him so distasteful, so beneath her, that she would not even grant him that small affection. His heart stung with bitterness at the realization. If she wanted to play that game, always making him reach in vain for her, then he would play along too. At least until he tired of her rules. And then this hound would tackle the doe, possessing her entirely, only taking his jaws off her throat when she finally loved him.

**

Robert Aske lovingly propped up the disfigured and stripped marble statue of the Madonna. Once Cromwell's thieves had looted Sawley Abbey for everything that could be melted down or turned to ready money, he stole into the abbey with John. Together, they rescued the Blessed Virgin, wrapping Her in their own coats as they loaded Her into a cart. Now, in his study, Aske dropped to his knees and looked upon what Cromwell's spite had wreaked: the vandals had chipped so deeply into the nose of the statue, that they had nearly taken the head off of the Virgin. What would make a man want to do that to something so beautiful? Those crooks had ripped away the priceless silk tunic wrapped around the statue: not as a frivolous display of wealth because the Queen of Heaven deserved no less.

Gently, his small, plump fingers traced the outline of the merciful face. You are still beautiful, still Mary full of grace, Aske told the figure. He started to lay a hand on the vicious gap where the Virgin's nose should have been, but his palm fell away. He breathed a heavy sigh. The awful news finally trickled into Yorkshire: Lord Cromwell had indeed taken Elizabeth Seymour as his bride. Now, with Cromwell's foot on the Seymours' throats, Aske knew that Queen Jane and her family would not lift a finger to stop the destruction of their faith. Worst of all, there was little chance of deposing that Lutheran heretic now that Elizabeth Seymour was probably already carrying that devil's child. And that devil would now be uncle to Queen Jane's children; his own unholy spawn would be first cousins to next king of England. At that thought, Aske bowed his head, crossed himself, and prayed to the mutilated Virgin before him.

**

Henry, pleased with the submission of the Lady Mary, wanted to reward himself with a morning hunt. He called together the Gentlemen of the Privy Chamber, and Jane's ladies. Elizabeth pulled Jane's riding hat down to a jaunty angle before helping her sister into the saddle. As she arranged Jane's skirts demurely over the saddle, she asked, "Is it true? Are we really going to see Mary at Hatfield?"

Jane grinned. "Yes! His Majesty has told me we can go see her. We can even bring her gifts." Elizabeth shielded her eyes from the sun and smiled at Jane's eagerness. For Jane, Mary was a lonely girl who needed her father, needed a mother figure—instead of a pawn in Edward or Cromwell's machinations.

Elizabeth finished buttoning her riding habit. Out of custom, she swung herself into her saddle with a great deal of momentum and very little grace. She cringed as she landed hard in the saddle: the bruised, velvety flesh between her thighs smarted. Her face must have screwed up in discomfort as she delicately tried to readjust her positioning, because Anne Stanhope howled.

"My God Lissie, what did you sit on the horns of Lucifer while you were about it last night! Shall you last the entire hunt, or do we need physician on hand, just in case?" Anne chortled. Elizabeth was about ready to slap Anne in the face with her riding crop when Jane held up her hand, signaling restraint. Jane: the peacemaker.

Tom kicked his horse up to stand beside Elizabeth's. "You know, I can take you back to the palace, if it gets to be too much for you," he said discreetly. She smiled at his thoughtfulness. They'd barely spoken since her wedding, and she missed him already. Tom patted her riding boot. "Don't pay any attention to Anne. Edward doesn't."

As they rode out, with the hounds barking and running between the horses, Tom kept his horse close to Elizabeth's. Once out into the open fields, the riders were able to disperse, and Tom and Elizabeth ducked behind a grove of trees.

"It's true, Cromwell is getting blamed for the uprising," Tom explained. "But Papists are not high in favor either. The king has started asking about the Poles again, and Cromwell is more than delighted to shift some of the heat from himself and use it to stoke the king's paranoia elsewhere. It's not so much that his Majesty is angry that the rebels oppose the Reformation—that's Cromwell's brainchild. What incenses the king most is the act of rebellion itself, he takes it as a personal affront."

Elizabeth looked around to be sure they were as alone as she thought. She leaned in towards Tom. "Cromwell wants Jane to intercede with the king, plead some sort of leniency."

Tom whistled. "Things must be mangled if Cromwell is that desperate. Did you ask Jane?"

"Yes, but she wants no part in this. Can't blame her. She just wants to soothe things over where she can, and face her back to the wind for the bad storms." Elizabeth reined her horse closer to Tom's. "And, she worries for her own position."

Tom considered for a moment. "Who's the upstart?"

"Ursula," Elizabeth admitted. She waved her crop at him. "Do not get any ideas about cooking her a meal she won't recover from."

Tom studied her. "The wedding was only a month ago. We are not yet into July, and already the king's eyes have strayed. Ursula's your friend, you manage her. We lucked out today, with the submission of the Lady Mary. His majesty will no longer be upset with Jane for bringing up Mary. Who knows, he might even thank her for reconciling him with his daughter—now that Mary has accepted her place in the world."

"If the king wants her, Ursula is not in a position to refuse. Who should know that better than us?" As Tom and Elizabeth cantered forward to join the rest of the court, a lone rider came tearing across the open field. They converged with him roughly the same time he made it to the king. Elizabeth's stomach knotted when she saw the rider was one of Cromwell's men.

The boy threw off his cap. "Begging pardon, your majesty." Henry swallowed his irritation, but nodded for the boy to go on. "The rebels have taken Lincoln, and they are marching on York!" Breathless, the lad spit it all out at once, as if that would somehow contain Henry's anger. The king glanced between Edward and Charles Brandon. Henry pounded on his saddle, causing his hunter to rear up. Then, he slammed his heels in the horse's ribs and took off at a break-neck pace back to the palace.

**

Henry was in rare form as the Privy Council called itself to order. Edward sauntered in after changing from his riding clothes. Only a moment too late, he realized that the storm would pelt hail not just on Cromwell's head, but on everyone within striking distance of the king.

"Ah, my lord, so good of you to honor us with your presence," Henry snarled as Edward took his seat. Henry's sensitive lips turned up into a sensitive smile, about to forgive and forget, but he changed his mind, shouting, "So good of you Viscount Beauchamp to descend from on high to mingle with us mortals, _while the fucking country is in revolt_."

Henry made his way down the table. First order of business: cuff Cromwell over the head. The king panted with sweat and rage. "You knew! You knew all along about the opposition in Yorkshire didn't you? Didn't you!" Screaming, Henry put his nose to Cromwell's ear. "You worthless, pasty-faced, soot-covered son of a brewer! You honestly think you could keep something like this from me? I would have you slither back to whatever slimy Putney rock from whence you came. It is lucky you have the lap of queen's sister to rest between, because by God, I would not give her to you again!"

Edward could do nothing but gaze in admiration at Cromwell's iron faced resolve as he took the king's vile insults without so much as blinking. Edward shared a small smile with Charles Brandon, but Brandon got caught for it. Henry stalked over to him, looming over the Duke of Suffolk like a headmaster over a mischievous pupil.

"And, you Charles?! What are you sniggering about? Are you going to save my throne with your charm? Is that it? Will you put down this unholy rebellion using your good looks? Because you certainly will not be doing so with your intellect. You are thick and dumb as a block of wood. If the rebels decide to hold a jousting tournament, you will be sure to wear my queen's favors for her!"

Edward watched Tom drain his glass of wine in a single gulp, waiting patiently for his turn.

"Look at you all, just sitting there! The rebels could take York any day now!" Henry's voice grew hoarse with exhaustion, but he was far from finished.

"God help us," Rich murmured. Henry rounded on him. Bishop Gardiner lightly fingered the great cross around his neck.

"Sir Richard, your talent for stating the obvious, but unhelpful, makes me want to rip off the seal of Chancellor and choke you with it." He collapsed into his chair at the head of the table. "All of you sicken me. Get out all of you."

Upon their dismissal, some of the color made its way back into Suffolk's face. Almost reading his mind, Henry spoke sharply. "But, not you Charles, you stay. Cromwell, you stay too." As his shamefaced councilors filed out, Henry turned to Suffolk. "Charles, I'm making you commander of the royal forces. Go North. Extinguish this sin of rebellion. Teach those rebels a fearful, bloody lesson in slaughter."

Suffolk squared his shoulders. "As your majesty commands." Henry jerked his head to the door to indicate his dismissal. Henry waited until Suffolk closed the door behind him before focusing in on Cromwell. His first minister stared onward, bracing himself.

Henry caught his breath, smoothed his hands through his hair. Unconsciously, his hand kneaded at the wound on his leg. "So, you see I have dispatched Suffolk and the Royal Army. If needs be, I shall dispatch a second army."

"Yes." Cromwell gazed out, implacable as ever.

"Unless," Henry continued, "unless they disperse and send their ring leaders to me with halters around their necks, then Lord Suffolk has our permission to burn and destroy all their goods, and make a fearful example to all our subjects." Henry broke out into a sweat and placed his palm over where his ulcer lay.

"Yes," Cromwell said passively.

Henry heaved himself up, trying to steady his weight on both his legs, but the injured one nearly buckled. He clung to his chair for support. Clearing his voice and regaining his composure, Henry went on. "If still they do not submit, Cromwell, I promise the utter destruction of them, their wives, and their children." With great effort, Henry let go of the chair and turned to disappear behind the curtains. "Do you understand me?"

Cromwell opened his mouth to speak, but Henry cut in. "I will destroy them all." He paused, his aquamarine eyes widening. "And then I will destroy you, Cromwell."

**

"Jane's situation is precarious," Edward told Elizabeth. He caught her as they went into the great hall to dine. The king sent word that his leg had gone bad again, but that he would see Jane tomorrow. "Already, he wonders why Jane is not with child. And he won't be getting a child on her while his leg is so bad. The king will be angry if she is not soon with child, and he is already angry with the Papists anyway."

Edward pulled out a chair for Elizabeth so that she might sit next to him. "So," he continued. "This is bad all the way around for us. The only thing that might anger the king even more is if he sees you quicken with child before the queen. I don't care what you have to do, just make sure that Cromwell does not get you in foal before Jane. Imagine the spite of the king: watching his now hated minister impregnating the queen's sister before the queen herself quickens."

Elizabeth folded her arms. "Really? Would you like to tell Cromwell to cease and desist from my bed?"

Edward sipped his wine. "Like I said, I don't care what you have to do, or how you have to do it, but if I see your belly grow even an inch…"Edward just let the threat stand.

**

Elizabeth stayed up dancing as late as she possibly could to avoid having to face Cromwell. Predictably, he was working at his desk in his private study-- long after even the most diligent courtiers had gone to bed. She held her breath and walked by the open door as quickly as possible, praying that he would mistake the swish of her skirts as one of the maids. No such luck, because he called out to her: "Ah, you finally remembered where you lived."

Elizabeth took two steps backwards and peered into his study. "Not much else you can do when things go so wrong, not much else to do but dance, and drink, and hope for better days."

Cromwell waved her in and motioned that she should pull up a chair for herself. "There is always something else you can do. There is always a plan, a way out."

"You never feel hopeless? Never fear that the sun may not rise again?"

"No," He said simply. "No, because I don't wait for things to happen to me. I do not resign myself. I forge my own way in the world. You were born rich, you would not understand," he muttered. Cromwell's pale irises disappeared into black pools. He held her gaze for a moment. "You and your brothers think that just because I need to call in favor that means I'm broken? Hardly. My desperation was a natural act of weakness. Believe me when I say that I have faced far darker nights, and still lived to tell the tale."

She believed him. "So," she began cautiously "what if I needed to call in a favor?" His fox like ears pricked up, ready to bargain like a Smithfield whore.

"What sort of favor?"

"The king has already taken a mistress. The queen fears she may lose his affection. And," Elizabeth's voice grew quiet. "She desperately wants to be with child, but while the king is occupied elsewhere…"

Cromwell snorted with laughter. "You people."

"What do you mean, 'you people?'" she retorted sharply.

"Did you really think this would end any other way? How did her Majesty find her place to the throne? When the king plucked her from the former queen's ladies in waiting. How did Anne Boleyn get her place? Because the king saw her amongst Katherine's ladies. Is the pattern distinct enough for you, or shall I draw you a picture?" He shook his head and went back to his dispatches. "No one can help her Majesty, but herself in this matter. And in this matter, she must shut her mouth and look the other way." There it was: bleak and cynical, but the truth nonetheless. He changed tack. "Did you speak to the queen for me?"

"I did. But on that matter she will shut her mouth and look the other way," Elizabeth replied smoothly. Far from being nettled, Cromwell threw back his head and laughed.

"Lissie, I knew that I chose you for a reason. You keep me in fighting form." The hint of a smile played at his lips. "At any rate, let us to bed. It's late, and neither of us is going to save England and her queen tonight." As she turned to leave, he grabbed her hand and brought her knuckles to his lips. "Lissie, if the queen does not conceive then there is little I can do to protect her or your brothers. But, you are my wife. And I will protect you, and the children we will have—with my life if I have to." He kissed her palm and held it to his heart for a moment. "Whatever it takes, I will keep you safe; you have nothing to fear from me. Go on to bed, I'll follow shortly."

Once in her nightgown, Elizabeth knelt at her prieu-deau and pulled the rosary beads though her fingers, one at a time. She thought about what Edward told her, about what Cromwell told her. She did not have the heart to tell her husband that he could not lie with her until the queen was pregnant. Instead, she prayed and willed herself to be barren. Prayed to the Virgin Mother to keep her womb empty. Later, Elizabeth would speculate that she either did not pray hard enough, or Cromwell was right—and it was useless to pray to saints and Madonnas—because she missed her monthly courses two weeks later. And a week after that, her stomach sickened, and her breasts grew sore.


	9. Chapter 9

Elizabeth saw a ghost on one of the hottest days of that summer. On her way to see Edward, she glimpsed a mass of blond curls and sad, stooped shoulders. She reversed direction and jogged after the apparition. Although black moist clouds hung heavy over the morning, somehow the late July sun managed to penetrate the overcast and bake White Hall Palace until it hissed and steamed like a pastry. As she wove her way through the throng of sweating courtiers seeking refuge in the cool of the gardens, her stomach turned over and over itself. She gulped back against the sickness forcing itself up her throat. Desperately, she wanted to duck behind a tall hedge and empty her already empty gut. But, she pressed on after her ghost, afraid to lose those matted golden curls.

"Sir Thomas? Sir Thomas?" she called out, hopping up every other step so that her spirit might notice her. His steps lengthened and quickened, taking him towards her husband's offices. Elizabeth broke out into a run to catch up with him. Even in her delicate cotton gown, she perspired uncomfortably under her stays.

"Sir Thomas?" she called out again. Finally, she fell in step behind him and plucked at his elbow. Reluctantly, the summer phantom turned around to face her. "Sir Thomas Wyatt, I knew it was you."

He bowed quickly to her. "Lissie, as it was. Lady Cromwell as it is." He turned on his heel.

"Wait!" She trotted up to him. She steadied herself against him with one palm on his chest as her jostled guts caught up with her.

"Are you, are you well?" Wyatt asked, concerned as he watched Elizabeth's once infamous rose complexion morph into varying shades of green and yellow. He had written poems in honor of that unblemished ivory skin whose pink tones had once radiated out to every man that saw her.

Elizabeth held up a peremptory hand, a signal that she needed another moment to compose herself. Once she was sure of herself, she said, "Sir Thomas, you've been missed."

"I've been recovering. In Kent."

She took in his whitewashed face and bleary eyes. He was a man still very much in grief, perhaps because he was still very much in love. Gently, she placed her hand on his shoulder.

"I am so sorry for how all of this business came about. Please believe it. Please believe that it was not the malice of Her Majesty or me," she whispered.

"I know. I know whose spite to resent." His eyes looked at her face without seeing, numbed by defeat. He sniffed and glanced around. "But I see Master Cromwell and Queen Jane are not the only ones to have been spectacularly promoted." He hooked the third finger of her left hand with his own, toying with the magnificent emerald ring that Cromwell had presented to her a few days after the wedding.

"Tom, you know me. You know that I had no say in any of this," she said, suddenly embarrassed.

"And yet, you were always so outspoken," he quipped. Wyatt tried to take his leave again, but Elizabeth grabbed on to his bicep. A few eyebrows arched at the unfolding scene, so Elizabeth immediately released him.

"If you keep up this desperate gesturing, your husband might get the wrong idea and put me back in the Tower," Wyatt grumbled. He walked on, but Elizabeth put herself in front of him.

"Tom, please don't. We were friends. We drank together, gambled away our money to each other. Look at me," she implored. "Look at me and then tell me that I have not suffered too. I have lost, too."

Briefly, Wyatt ran his eyes over her. She'd lost an ungodly amount of weight and her collar bones jutted out of her chest like the Cliffs of Dover. Her once splendid mane of strawberry blonde hair was a dull shadow of its former self. Still a lovely woman, but only if you had nothing to compare with, only if you had not seen her freshly returned from the North: a young widow, confident in her looks and her money. Apparently, Cromwell had seized her assets even before seizing upon her supple body. Or, so the gossipers told him in Kent.

Suddenly, Elizabeth whirled around and vomited into the shrub manicured into a unicorn. Wyatt closed himself around her, trying to afford her a little privacy from the gaping court. He patted her shoulder and passed her the skein of clean water he carried with him. Gratefully, she took it from him and threw back a few hearty gulps. She felt around in her pocket for the mint leaves and licorice lozenges she'd taken to carrying around. Dreaming of roasted haunches of game, instead her queasy belly had to make do with nibbling on rosemary, basil, or mint leaves—the only things that stalled the sickness and the sour taste in her mouth.

She wiped at her mouth. "Do you still write?" She regretted asking it as soon as his eyes brimmed with tears.

"The words will not come to me." He stepped away from her. "Really, Lissie, I must be going. Your husband wants to see me, and you should know better than anyone not to keep him waiting." He cocked his head, his thick curls swishing to one side. "He is a hard man. Pray he is a little softer with you. Just…," Wyatt trailed off.

Elizabeth met his own questioning expression. "Just, what?"

"Just, be careful of him. Promise me? Promise that you will tread softly about him?"

"I know," she nodded. "Of all people, I know that." She blanched further and teared up. Wyatt swept her an over the top bow, the way he used to, and gallantly kissed her emerald ring.

"Whatever your brothers plot, whatever they tell you to do, you have a care first and foremost for that pretty white neck. Because this," and he tugged at her ring, "is no surety when it comes to Master Cromwell."

She shrugged at the warning, increasingly numb to her fear of her own husband. "Well, if we do not meet again, let me at least think on you as a friend." Wyatt tried to smile, but it came out like a strained grimace. She started to head back in the direction from which she came, but checked for a moment.

"And Tom, you should start writing again. It's time."

Wyatt remained glued to his place, watching her retreating back until it disappeared into the milieu of gowns and doublets. The dark clouds pressed down heavily from the sky, squeezing out fat rain drops and a growing breeze lightened the weight of the summer heat. As the winds picked up, they carried the up the long, French style sleeves of Elizabeth's gown. Like the rapid beat of a humming bird's wings, her fine gown of Indian cotton flapped in the breeze. Poor bird, Wyatt thought.

**

"Ah, Sir Thomas Wyatt," Cromwell beamed, the perpetual host of a banquet that never seemed to end. "Sir Thomas, we are so happy to see you back." Graciously, he handed Wyatt a glass of white wine, cooled by the pewter it sat in. Cromwell gestured that Wyatt take a seat opposite him.

"Miserable weather isn't it?"Cromwell remarked. Wyatt sipped his wine and noted that Cromwell appeared cool and serene in his cotton, summer robes. Discussing the weather. Unfazed by the oppressive heat or the deaths of four innocent men. Unconcerned about a murdered queen.

"So hot and muggy. Almost makes me wish I were going North with you," Cromwell fanned himself with a pamphlet. Wyatt just stared at nothing, not thinking about rebels and reform. Instead, he thought of a dark haired, blue eyed beauty who he had once worshipped under the summer shade of an apple tree. Irritated at Wyatt's non-responsiveness, Cromwell snapped his fingers in front of Wyatt's face.

"North? Me?" Wyatt managed. What was the meaning of this? He thought, God does he want to conscript me into smashing in abbey windows?

Cromwell leaned back in his great chair, eyes closed, and put down his wine. "Of course. I am sending you to Lincolnshire to stamp out a few embers for me."

Wyatt ran a hand through his curls, damp with sweat. "I suppose I am to thank you for this favor?"

Cromwell's eyes flew open. He hunched over his desk. "You do not need to thank me, you just need to do it." Resettling himself into his chair, he fanned himself with the pamphlet, cooling himself in the breeze of his own propaganda. "On second thought, if you would like to express a little gratitude at the opportunity to reprove your loyalty, then it would not go unnoticed," Cromwell hinted heavily.

Wyatt folded his hands around the cool pewter. He had once freely accepted Cromwell's patronage. Perhaps not prudent, but not a total waste either: he walked out of the Tower alive. Survived to watch a French sword hack in two the neck of the only woman he had ever loved. Anne was dead. But, he--guilty as sin--was alive. So, Cromwell proved that he could take care of his own.

"I saw you speaking with my wife," Cromwell said. Neutral statement, but plenty of room to turn dangerous. He stopped fanning himself long enough to stare at Wyatt meaningfully.

"Lissie …." Wyatt fumbled, cursing himself for being caught off-guard, and being just a little unnerved at Cromwell's omniscience. "Your wife looks….looks well." He wanted to say, And she used to look better until you got a hold of her.

"Next time, admire her with your eyes, not with your hands," Cromwell said flatly. Wyatt chewed at his lip. As he recalled, it was Elizabeth who put her hand on him first.

"Keep your sensitive hands to yourself next time. Or there will not be a next time."Cromwell tossed the pamphlet aside carelessly.

**

"You stupid slut, how could you do this?" Edward demanded. Elizabeth had not even fully closed the oak door, sealing Edward's privy chamber off from his more public rooms. Once she shut the door behind her, she leaned against the cool wood and swallowed another wave of nausea.

"You look about as green as the Thames," Tom said, not unkindly. He made himself a seat on one of the chests and winked at Elizabeth.

"How could you do this?" Edward insisted.

Elizabeth drew in a deep, steadying breath. "_I _did not do anything. Don't blame me; Master Cromwell did all the work. I just laid there." Which was not precisely true at times, Elizabeth thought.

Tom chuckled, but Edward crossed his arms, intensifying his stare. "You both think this is funny?" he asked quietly.

"Do you see me laughing?" Elizabeth replied bitterly. She had not been able to keep anything but bread and ale down for the past six weeks. Her ribs throbbed from the repeated strain of violent heaves that made her sicken up her whole meal, and when she'd been emptied of everything, the waves of nausea strained to bring up nothing but bile. Her throat stung from the relentless onslaught. Sometimes at night, after a particularly long bout, she would ball herself up and cry with exhaustion. And frustration. Starving, but unable to eat. Miserable and embarrassed, but too sick to have care for her dignity as Cromwell held her hair back as she retched into the nearest available basin.

"We are going to ignore this. We are going to pray this goes away, that you have a happy accident. You are not to tell anyone if they ask. Not even the king. Not your husband." Edward had turned to the window, and he spoke to the reflections of Elizabeth and Tom on the panes of glass.

"Granted, we salute your husband's fruitfulness and determination," Tom said solemnly.

Elizabeth stared at her shoes. "Cromwell knows, anyway." She hesitated. "Edward, he's been married before, had children: he knows."

"If you were to get rid of it, do you think he would suspect you?" Edward bluntly posed what he had been thinking since he bribed one of Elizabeth's maids into telling him that Elizabeth had missed her courses for two months.

Elizabeth gave a strangled cry. "You, you cannot really be asking me…I cannot…it is a sin that you should even ask me." She glanced at Tom, appealing, but he would not meet her eyes. She straightened herself and met Edward's gaze head-on. "No. I won't do that. Besides, you know those potions kill the woman just as often as they kill the child."

Edward raised his eyebrows, unconvinced. "And what do you expect this family to do if your child quickens before Jane even conceives?"

Elizabeth turned to leave without so much as a curtsy or a proper dismissal. As an afterthought, she looked over her shoulder and remarked, "I'm not sure what this family should do. But perhaps you might have imagined this situation before you married me off." She slammed the door shut.

Tom rested his chin on his balled up fist. "So, we are really doing to put on this masque and dance along, as if nothing is amiss?"

After a few moments, Edward faced Tom. "You know, I honestly didn't think Cromwell had it in him," he told his brother.

**

Elizabeth caught Jane in a rare moment of solitude while her other ladies were occupied readying her bath. Jane stood by herself, examining half a dozen downs laid out for her. She'd told her ladies to cull together what they thought were her best ones.

Elizabeth gave a perfunctory curtsy. "Those for today or tomorrow?"

Jane straightened her shoulders and put on a smile for Elizabeth. "For tomorrow, when we go see the Lady Mary at Hatfield. I cannot decide. What does one wear when one meets the granddaughter of Ferdinand and Isabella?"

"Well, certainly not that." Elizabeth pointed to the sea green riding habit, trimmed in sables. "You will roast like a Christmas goose inside that." Her stomach growled and turned simultaneously at the thought of roast meat, greasy in its own juice. Please God, she prayed, please let me keep down a piece of meat.

"Really? But it's the most expensive one. And look at the sables. Besides, we leave first thing in the morning. So it should still be cool enough."

Ursula came out, holding Jane's pale green dressing gown. Both Elizabeth and Jane fell silent, and stared at Ursula a little harder then they both meant to. The king had forgotten Jane's bed again, pleading doctors' orders. And, apparently in addition to being a lady in waiting, Ursula was now a Barbary surgeon because the king would allow her and no one else to attend his ulcer. Jane's heart sat heavy in her chest; at this rate, Ursula would produce another bastard Duke of Richmond before she would bear a Prince of Wales.

"What news from our brothers?" Jane asked distantly. For the past two months, she had watched her younger sister sicken over the faintest of smells and paw at her bodice, clearly uncomfortable with the swelling and pain in her breasts. For the past month, she'd watched Elizabeth and wondered how a woman who so did not want a baby found herself so quick with child.

Elizabeth drew up a stool next Jane. "Edward is Edward. Tom is Tom. And, the North is coming apart at the seams. So, all is as it was yesterday." Elizabeth studied the needle point patterns she was creating for the Lady Mary. Jane had already sat late with the master jeweler, fretting about which pieces to give the Lady Mary. Afraid her tastes would appear provincial to the daughter of Katherine of Aragon. For her part, Elizabeth had asked Cromwell for £20 with which to buy the Lady Mary some bolts of cotton from India and yards of silk, embroidered with peonies and dragons. Absolutely not, Cromwell told her. He refused to subsidize the Lady Mary's fashion or finances. Elizabeth would have to make do with her needlepoint patterns.

Once in her bath, Jane dismissed Elizabeth for the rest of the day, saying she looked like she could use a rest. Lady Rochford squinted at her as she took her leave of Jane. Lately, Elizabeth had been sick as a dog and next to useless. So, most of the work, the logistics fell to Jane Boleyn—who made no effort to hide her resentment of Elizabeth.

"Gone so soon, Lissie?" she asked. "But you were barely here. Ah well, must be quite a luxury to be a woman who does not have to earn her keep." Lady Rochford stabbed her needle in and out of her embroidery.

Elizabeth was sorting Jane's embroidery threads by color, a little bit of housekeeping before she left to be sick in her own bed. "Lady Rochford, you know perfectly well how I earn my keep around here," she grumbled. "And you know that I only have what my husband gives me."

Jane Boleyn snorted with laughter. "You and everyone else here." It amused her to no end that Elizabeth still thought she was somehow exempt from the penury of being a woman.

**

Elizabeth dunked her head beneath the cold water of her bath. She closed her eyes and let the peaceful vacuum of nothing envelop her. Sometimes, she wondered what stood in the place of the world before God made it. She could not imagine what absolute nothingness looked like, but thought perhaps it would sound similar to the dull buzz she heard underwater. When her lungs burned from lack of air, she shot up out of the water. As she rubbed the water out of her eyes, and they regained their focus, she was disquieted to find Cromwell watching her attentively. Almost on reflex, she drew her knees into her chest.

"I was wondering when you were going to come up for air," he remarked. "Should I be concerned that you might try to drown yourself when I'm away?"

Words failed her; she had no retort. For two months she'd slept with this man every night, and he still unsteadied her. The slightest whiff of cloves and cinnamon, and her body froze, vigilant to a threat she was sure would overcome her as soon as she relaxed her guard. To her familiar dread, he began stripping off his clothes. She pulled her knees even closer.

"I take it there's room in there for two." He said it as a statement. Because he was telling her to make room. As he slipped into the water, for a moment she thought she saw one of his blink-and-you'll-miss-it smiles. Facing her, he wrapped his arms around her bent legs, running his palms up and down the outside of her thighs. Her belly somersaulted and she could not meet his eyes.

"Still so shy," he murmured, lightly stroking under legs. "Why?" He hugged his arms around her bent knees and rested his chin on them. "Why so shy?" he asked again.

"I'm not shy," she said quietly, "Just guarded."

He kissed both her knees then turned his head to rest his cheek against them. "It seems to be a state of being particular to my presence," he observed with a note of hurt and rejection in his voice. He reached out and grazed her abdomen.

"Any better today?" he asked, changing the subject. Elizabeth shook her head.

"No. Worse, if anything."

His fingers traced up from her belly, over her ribs, to her protruding collar bones. "Dove, you need to start eating more."

"I'm trying," she said defensively. "But I cannot keep anything down."

"Small comfort, but it will get better."

"What? What will get better?" She dared him to name that which had to remain unsaid.

"Everything. Everything will get better, Dove." He leaned in and kissed her jaw-line. "Let us dry off and go to bed." He stood and offered her his hand, palm up. Sighing, she placed her hand and allowed him to pull her to standing. Standing behind her, he wrapped her in a drying sheet and enfolded her in his arms, lean with wiry, knotted muscles.

"Tell me what you want, what will make you happy, and I'll gladly do it," he breathed into her ear. She wanted to believe him, wanted to be able to trust he was in earnest. That would make her happy: if she could stop doubting him, if he would stop giving her reason to constantly look over her shoulder.

Instead, she said, "I am happy."

Cromwell rotated her to face him. "Not happy enough to love me." He sounded almost resigned.

Her wet head drooped against his bare chest. "I just need a little more time."

He dropped his arms and pushed her towards the bed. "And, how much more time can you possibly require?" he scoffed. He yanked away the sheet wrapped around Elizabeth. She wanted to crack him upside the head and shout at him that this was exactly the sort of thing that made him a difficult man to love.

As if remembering himself, he regained his poise. "Of course. These things take time." He stretched out across the mattress, lean and taut as a hunting hound. He patted the space beside him. Elizabeth swallowed against another swell nausea, willing her stomach to quiet. Then she slid next to him. Almost immediately, he rolled on top of her, already stiff with desire. She told her legs to spread for him, but they remained determinedly locked together. Cromwell tried to part her thighs, but her body would not yield.

Hoarse with lust, he whispered against her ear, "Spread your legs and open your eyes." Finally, she relented and made herself vulnerable to him. He dove between her thighs, frantically sucking at the sensitive nub of flesh between her legs. Her lower back arched with a force and will of its own. The pleasure came so quickly and sharply that she cried out. On instinct, she knotted her hands through his dark hair as he lapped at her parts. She would hate herself later, like she always did. But, at least for that moment, she felt and thought nothing.

She let out another strangled cry as he kissed the inside of her thighs. "Tell me that you want me inside you," he pleaded.

Her hips bucked on their own account. "Yes, yes, God yes." The words were out of her mouth before she could stop them. Again, she would hate herself in an hour. But, for now, she found herself spreading for him and he eased himself inside of her. The relief of being filled by him overwhelmed them both. For a brief moment, Elizabeth wrapped her legs around his hips and felt the equal of her husband; their mutual need had reduced them to the same level.

"I need you," he said as he thrust harder, faster. "It frightens me how much I love you. I need you and I hate that." He burrowed his face into her hair, pushing as deeply inside of her as he could, before his muscles went slack and he flooded into her.

A surge of sickness jolted her out of her trance. Ungainly, she shoved Cromwell off of her and made a break for the window. Kneeling on top of the window seat, she pushed the window open in enough time to vomit on to the garden below. Behind her, she heard Cromwell punch at the mattress in frustration, but she was too ill to care. Her body heaved and strained, trying in vain to purge an already empty stomach. She rested her head against the pane, making certain that this particular wave had passed.

"Here." Cromwell had gotten up, poured her a little water. "Drink this slowly."

"I'm sorry," she mumbled.

"Well, don't be. It's not your fault I suppose." He held a cool rag to her neck. The cold steadied her and quieted her insides.

"I hate this," she said after a while. "I utterly hate this." She buried her face in her hands and yielded to tears. He rubbed the small of her back in slow circles.

"It will get better," he promised, trying to soothe her. "Another month and-"

"I hate this," she cut in. "I hate…I hate all of this!" She grabbed the wet rag from around her neck and threw it at him: the only convenient target.

He barely registered the assault. Sighing heavily, he slid an arm under her legs, and she allowed him to gather her up like a bundle and carry her back to bed. He pulled the sheets over the both of them as she settled against him.

"All will be well," he whispered against the top of her head. She said nothing, but let him stroke her back until she fell asleep.

Elizabeth awoke with her face smashed into her pillow. Rubbing the feeling back into her cheeks, she sat up and looked around. Cromwell was gone. She continuously marveled that anyone could so regularly rise so early and go to bed so late. Cautiously, she stood up, alert for another bout of sickness. Her luck held out and she was able to sip some ale and pop a few grapes in her mouth. She washed under her arms and between her legs. Still no sickness. So, she retaliated with a little more ale and a full slice of bread.

As one of her maids laced her into her riding habit, the girl remarked, "My lady, perhaps we should take your gowns in? Just a little? We can always let them out again when…" the girl couldn't finish.

Elizabeth looked at both their figures in the full length looking glass. Suddenly, she could see what everyone else had been seeing all along. Her green habit, laced as tight as the maid could, nonetheless fell slack over her gaunt body. Unconsciously, her hand slid down to her lower belly—which appeared distended from the rest of the skeletal frame above. In a fit of useless vanity, she suddenly wished that she had been presented to Mary Tudor a few months ago.

The girl—whose name Elizabeth could never remember to her eternal embarrassment—pulled out a thimble sized compact out of her pocket. Deftly, she popped open the lid and dabbed her pinky at the pigment inside. She blended the color into the apples of Elizabeth's cheeks.

"Better," she nodded.

"Not as good as it was," Elizabeth rejoined. She spread a little of the color into her lips, which seemed to have shrunk with the rest of her.

"Much better," the maid insisted.

**

Cromwell made it his business to be down in the stableyards before anyone else that morning. His instincts proved correct when one of the grooms, holding the reins of Elizabeth's mare, cautiously approached him. He looked up at the youth, expectantly. The young man thrust forward a neatly folded scrap of paper without preamble.

"Sir Thomas Wyatt paid me to tuck it in your lady wife's saddle, but I didn't think it was proper."

Cromwell plucked the note from the groom's hand. "Well, proper or not, I expect you accepted his silver." He reached into his own pocket and tossed the groom a gold crown. "Take their bribes, take their coins. As long as everything gets to me in the end, I don't much care."

He absentmindedly pet the mare's nose as he read wounded Master Wyatt's latest contribution to the English language.

_Lissie, I am writing again:_

For shame Master Wyatt, that's a married woman you're addressing, Cromwell thought. But, he read on.

_Like as the bird in the cage enclosed __  
__The door unsparred and the hawk without __  
__Twixt death and prison piteously oppressed __  
__Whether for to choose standeth in doubt. __  
__Certes so do I, which do seek to bring about __  
__Which should be best by determination, __  
__By loss of life, liberty, or life, by prison. _

_--Wyatt_

Cromwell inwardly groaned. Honestly, Wyatt? He thought to himself. Master Wyatt, if you insist on rehashing metaphors of birds in cages and men in prisons, then we are all the richer if you cease writing. Perhaps the uprising in Lincolnshire would toughen up the poet. Or perhaps Cromwell would luck out and sensitive Master Wyatt would meet a poetic end, shot through the heart with an arrow.

The mare nudged him, and he realized he'd stopped scratching her. Cromwell had another motive for being the first one down here. Somewhere between the general warfare of his childhood, and the outright warfare in Italy, he'd developed a theory that if you really wanted a glimpse into a man's soul, then you ought to watch how animals react to him. When his father used to stumble, drunk and raging, into the stables, all of the horses would paw and shy away. The little puppy that Henry had given Jane? In a single day that dog had pissed on Edward's rug and bit Tom's hand.

He heard the clatter of women's heels down the stairs and turned to see the queen with her ladies trailing behind her. He took in her fur trimmed habit and thought, a little early in the year for sables, isn't it? But, he fixed his smile in place and bowed deeply.

"Your majesty looks well."

Jane smiled back. Barely. "It's not every day that an English girl from Wiltshire gets to meet a princess descended from Ferdinand and Isabella. As royal a princess as any…more so than most." Jane held his gaze and then looked away. He noted that the ears on Jane's mare pricked towards her eagerly, so perhaps Jane really was as mild as she had everyone believing.

As if on cue, the queen and her ladies dropped into a low curtsy while Henry limped out into the stable yard. Sheepishly, Ursula followed closely behind the king. Personally, Cromwell thought that if the woman could stand the putrid odor of Henry's ulcer and bounce up and down the royal cock, then she deserved to be made a countess at the very least.

Cromwell bowed, but Henry waved him over. "Listen to me, Master Cromwell," Henry grabbed a hold of his chain of office, "Listen well. If things fall apart while I am gone, I will know well enough who to blame." Henry let the grooms hoister him into the saddle, and he cursed under his breath, kneading at the diseased leg. The big hunter's ears went back and he tried to side step, but Henry yanked hard on the reins so that the beast's chin smashed against its neck.

"And where is your wife?" Henry demanded, agitated. "She's always late to everything."

True to form, Elizabeth appeared ten minutes later. She picked her way carefully across the stableyard. She gave an apologetic curtsy to Jane and Henry. Jane smiled and shook her head, but Henry narrowed his eyes and tracked her as she made her way to her horse.

"Late again," Cromwell grumbled.

"Perpetually, so it would seem." She shrugged off the admonishment. He cupped his hands and offered her a leg up into the saddle. Once she found her seat and gathered up her reins, Cromwell handed her Wyatt's note.

"Read it. It would seem Master Wyatt has found a new muse." Cromwell handed up her riding gloves. He had predicted that not only would Elizabeth be running late, but that she would forget her riding gloves and return to him that night with the hands of a farmer's wife. So, he took the liberty of tucking them into his robes that morning.

"It's a delicate allegory of hawks and prisons, and little birds in cages," Cromwell went on. "I think I am the hawk, you are the caged bird. Or, maybe the other way around." As Elizabeth reached down for her other glove, he caught her hand and kissed it. "And, Lissie," he said. "keep those gorgeous eyes open for me while you are about Hatfield."

Then he stood and waived pleasantly as the king and queen rode off to visit the lonely girl that Cromwell dreamed about poisoning.

**

"Where is Anne?" Elizabeth glanced over her shoulder as they trotted out. She looked for Edward's sour faced wife among their party.

An uncontrollable, almost teenage grin broke out of Jane's face. She tried to stifle a laugh, but she just giggled even more.

"I told Anne that we were leaving an hour later than we actually were."

"Jane, you're a dark horse!" Elizabeth laughed. "Are you sure there aren't other things that Tom and I got blamed for as children that you yourself were responsible for?"

Jane stifled another laugh, incriminating herself. Elizabeth studied her sister's profile as she rode. Her sister's instinct about the riding habit with the sables was correct; Jane looked every inch a golden queen and her color rose as she laughed. For a moment, Elizabeth envied her sister her looks and her health. Then she remembered that Jane would probably trade the crown jewels to be with child, so she pushed the thought out of her head.

Ever the careful rider, Jane hung back at the end of the train. Elizabeth was happy to ride slowly with Jane. The thought of a wild gallop down the road made her stomach knot up.

"What do you think she looks like?" Jane leaned over, a sisterly conspiracy.

"Sir Francis Bryan said she looked like a baby mouse—all pinkish and meowing. But I hear she's grown pretty. Pretty enough that everyone is asking Cromwell why she isn't married yet." Elizabeth could only assume that Cromwell told her things he did not mind everyone else knowing, but she still dropped her voice to a hush.

Jane leaned over further still, and beckoned for Elizabeth's ear. "Mary can rule this kingdom. You know it. And I know it," she said firmly. "She deserves her place back in line."

Mid morning found them clattering up to Hatfield. Pretty, Elizabeth thought. Worse places for an exile. Hurriedly, she chewed some mint and rosemary leaves to sweeten her breath. Fortunately, she'd only been sick once on the road. Not bad for being jostled around in the saddle for the past few hours. About to dismount so she could help Jane down, Elizabeth watched as Jane shimmied out of the saddle herself. She walked purposefully towards the main doors of Hatfield—leaving Elizabeth and the rest of the ladies straggling to catch up with her. Elizabeth swung her leg around the pommel of the saddle, and her feet hit the ground with a great thud. She glanced about her, searching for the king, but Henry was nowhere to be found. She took off after Jane.

"Jane! Jane, wait!" Elizabeth skid to a halt behind Jane. Catching her breath, she saw two severe looking women, both dressed in black. One old, one young, but both had faces screwed up into a scowl.

Jane marched towards the young woman with dark hair and alabaster skin. "Mary," she smiled. She held out her hands to Mary Tudor, and Mary lightly held Jane's fingertips. Before Mary could sweep into a curtsy, Jane held her up by the elbows and firmly planted a kiss on each cheek.

"Mary, everyone tells me how pretty you've become. But they should have said 'beautiful.' Don't you think so, Lissie?"

At the small compliment, Mary flushed scarlet, from her cheeks all the way down to her crucifix. She attempted a smile, almost unsure of how to work the muscles to form one.

Jane guided Elizabeth forward. "Mary, may I present to you, my sister, Lady Elizabeth."

Elizabeth noted that Jane left out the surname, Cromwell. Probably just as well. She bowed as deeply as she could and murmured, "Your highness." At that, she chided herself, remembering she was no longer Princess Mary, but the Lady Mary. Stupidly, she just gaped at Mary, the most royal person Elizabeth had ever seen—more royal perhaps than Henry himself.

Mary's chaperone rolled her eyes at the country Seymour girls coming to call on a princess, but Jane was nonplussed. She pulled Mary's arm through the crook of her elbow. "Lady Mary, you must show us around your fine house," Jane said.

Bewildered, Mary tried to form a sentence, but the words came out garbled. "The…we can, that is if your Majesty wishes…the garden."

Over her shoulder, Jane threw Elizabeth a wink. My God, Elizabeth thought. A princess of Spain and England is going to show us her garden. Elizabeth fell in step behind them as Mary pointed out each plant, each flower. Its Latin name. Its French name. What herbs she used for which possets. Elizabeth thought that if Cromwell could see Mary right now, so eager, so unaccustomed to kindness, then he would not be so cold towards Katherine's daughter. The longer the three of them walked, the tighter Mary held on to Jane, as if she were afraid that if she loosened her grip for a single moment, Jane would slip away and Mary would be all alone again.

Once in the main presence chamber of Hatfield, Jane presented each one of her ladies to Mary. The Lady Mary even had the grace to pretend as if she had never met Jane Boleyn before. Awkwardly, Elizabeth held out the needle point patterns she'd created for Mary. Mary studied them, tracing with her finger the path that her needle would take.

"St. George slaying the dragon," Mary said wryly. "I cannot imagine Lord Cromwell approves of this veneration of saints."

"My husband is in a general state of disapproval," Elizabeth observed. So, if he tries to kill you, do not take it personally.

"Mary, please take this, from our majesty." Jane pressed a velvet pouch into Mary's hands. Her tiny lips spread into an 'o' shape of surprise. Tenderly, Mary folded up the velvet pouch.

"Your Majesty is too kind," Mary stammered. Jane closed her hands around Mary's, warming and steadying them in her own.

"Mary, gifts like these are easy compared with gifts of the heart," Jane said simply. "It gives me more pleasure than I can say to see you reconciled with your father."

What little color remained in Mary's face bled out when she looked over Jane's shoulder to see Henry, lingering under the arch-way. She gave a little gasp and bowed deeply. Elizabeth fell into a synchronized curtsy with the other ladies. From under her lowered lashes, she watched as Henry made his way to Mary, unblinking, almost trancelike.

Mary bowed even lower. "Your Majesty."

Henry could not take his eyes off her, how much she had grown, how lovely she'd become. "Mary?"

He was not even sure it was Mary. He tried, but failed, to reconcile this pretty, forlorn girl with the roving political threat that Cromwell said needed to be exterminated as soon as possible. He hooked her chin with his fingers, taking in the blue-green eyes that mirrored his own. He drew her to standing and pulled her to him.

"Here's a note for a thousand crowns," Henry told her. Elizabeth mentally checked off another reason why it was best Cromwell stayed behind: if he knew that Henry was giving Mary a thousand crowns, Cromwell would faint like an old woman.

"If you need anything, anything else, you only need ask," Henry said gently. Tears blurred Mary's eyes and she looked away.

"Thank you, Your Majesty." Mary's lips trembled.

Henry took her face in his hands. "Father," he corrected her.

"Yes, Father." Mary tried the word on for size; she had not used it in so long. Always the King, His Majesty. But not Father, not for years. Henry nestled his forehead against Mary's. He kissed her between her brows and smiled sadly, taking his leave of her. Elizabeth wondered if that was how kings reconciled after wars: when the fight was so long, so bloody, that at the end no one even knew for what cause. And having fought, suffering the same wounds, they embraced and promised to be kinder to one another.

In the late afternoon sun, Elizabeth helped Jane out of her sables. She turned around and passed them off to Ursula.

"Here, you can carry these back," Elizabeth said coolly. Ursula opened her mouth to say something, but Elizabeth turned around before she could get a word out. They rode back hard, racing against the setting sun. Ursula kicked her horse forward to fall in beside Elizabeth.

"Lissie, are you really not going to speak to me anymore? Surely you know, when I came to serve her Majesty, I meant only good." Ursula defended herself, but Elizabeth was not moved to tears.

"See, here's the thing, Ursula: I am a wife. My sister is a wife. And you are a whore. You and me, we have nothing to say to each other, nothing in common." Elizabeth stared on ahead.

"Lissie!" Ursula cried. "I did not have much choice."

"There is always a choice!" Elizabeth rounded on her, but composed herself when she realized she was quickly creating a scene for the gossip mongerers to chew on back at White Hall. So, she cantered forward before she could say anything more dreadful. But, quick as divine retribution, Elizabeth had to rein her mare to the side, off the road, so she could lean over and regurgitate all the wine and biscuits she'd partaken in with Mary.

Henry, riding alone, thinking his own thoughts, had studied the entire scene between his wife's sister and his own mistress. Maybe Jane knew, maybe she didn't. It hardly mattered to Henry because he trusted Jane would not make trouble, not like the last one. But, Lissie Seymour had caught his attention when she leaned over her horse and retched like a sailor on his first day at sea. He'd seen a woman look like that before. Several times in fact. The queen's own sister was clearly sick with child, and yet everyone treated him like a fool who would not notice. His first minister, more powerful than Wolsey had ever been, must have conspired to keep secret the fact that he had impregnated his wife. Probably on the first try, too.

Henry's ulcer started to throb as his blood began to boil. That smarmy, skinny Cromwell had gotten the queen's sister with child, and everyone masqueraded around their king as if nothing were amiss? What would Europe say when they learned that Henry's swarthy, heretical minister was more fecund than his own prince? Henry had been so sure that he would have Jane immediately with child that he had not given a second thought to marrying the queen's sister off to his closest advisor. Dazed by his own vanity, he had not counted as possible the chance that Lissie would take with child so quickly.

Honestly, Henry had not thought that Cromwell had it in him.

**

The next evening, Henry and Jane dined privately. Impatiently, Elizabeth waited for the royal couple to finish picking at their meal so she could take her bath and go to bed. Jane, still glowing from the excitement of meeting with Mary, could not stop talking about her.

"Mary was so sweet and affectionate," Jane reminisced. "She was everything I hoped she would be. It seems to me no wonder she's so marvelously beloved for her virtue and her goodness in the hearts of the people."

Henry said nothing. But, he flicked his eyes between Elizabeth and Ursula. Circumspect, Ursula lowered her eyes. However, Elizabeth met the king's gaze and could do nothing but stand helplessly while his eyes ran over her bodice, the curve of her hips, and finally coming to rest on her lower abdomen. As he scrutinized the round, almost distended, belly in isolation of the rest of her thin frame, Elizabeth thought it was time for Edward and Cromwell to fold their cards, because Henry _knew_.

"Your Majesty must invite her to court, show her off," Jane persisted. Henry merely grunted in reply. Abruptly, she became aware that Henry was not even looking at her, but looking past her, probably at one of her ladies.

"Your Majesty?" She caught Henry's attention. "Why will you not speak to me?" She asked bluntly. Elizabeth had never heard her be so forward with the king. She held her breath.

"Because I am disappointed." He said it as if the source of his dissatisfaction was the most obvious in the world.

"Wh-why?" Jane asked, stunned into bluntness. Elizabeth closed her eyes and braced for the answer she knew was at hand.

"I'm disappointed because you are not yet with child. That's all."

The bronze in Jane's cheeks turned jaundiced, and she picked at her plate.

Later, Elizabeth would wonder if the planets fell out of alignment that night, because the king's wound burst open, the rebels entered York, and she returned to her chamber to find Thomas Cromwell on his knees, praying to anything that would listen.

**

Rich rushed forward, anxious for news, any reliable news. He pressed towards Cromwell.

"Well, what's the news?" he exclaimed.

Cromwell reached over Rich to sign off on a bill. "This matter hangs like a fever." He paused, scribbled something on a piece of paper someone handed him. "One day good, another bad." He spoke as one who would know. "With the promise of a pardon, and the threat of an advancing royal army, the rebels in Lincolnshire have dispersed and gone home. More to Wyatt's charm."

Rich sighed with relief, but turned to the pressing matter: "And in Yorkshire?"

Cromwell groaned then looked about himself, fraught with worry. He motioned that Rich should follow him. As they walked, Cromwell smiled and nodded: Holbein himself could not have painted a better picture of equanimity. Cromwell said nothing until he and Rich were alone in the empty presence chamber.

"In Yorkshire, in the whole north we are facing the most dangerous insurrection that has ever been seen."

Rich swallowed the news in quiet panic. Cromwell continued while Rich tried to contain himself.

"The rebels entered the town of York 3 days ago, and celebrated mass in the cathedral." At that Cromwell wiped at his face, rubbing his eyes as if to blot out the image of idolatry and superstition.

"And, some say they intend to march south." Cromwell abruptly left Rich, leaving him to stroke his beard and try and make sense of it all.

Somewhere between the main hall, and his own offices, a messenger handed him a dispatch bearing the seal of Lord Darcy in Pontefract. He received so many these days, that it took a real disaster to jolt him from his despondency. Although addressed to the king, Cromwell tore open the seal, reading as he walked.

_Your Majesty,_

_I write to you on an urgent matter. We have had word that a pilgrim army is marching on to Pontefract Castle, which is under my command. I am compelled to tell you that I cannot defend this castle without more soldiers and arms. As the warden of the East Marches and a member of your Majesty's council, I beg your majesty to consider negotiating with these pilgrims._

The last clause nearly brought Cromwell to his knees. Consider negotiating with these _pilgrims? _He wanted to gallop all the way to Pontefract just so he could shout in Darcy's face that these were not pilgrims, but rebels intent on destroying everything Cromwell had undertaken. He buried his face in his hands, wishing away the looming disaster. And where the hell was Brandon, at any rate? Did the Duke of Suffolk make a wrong turn on the way to Yorkshire? Was he tumbling a dairy maid, pawing her tits while the Commonwealth burned itself up?

As if an actor on cue, another messenger pressed a letter into Cromwell's hand and walked away quickly, before he could be struck as the bearer of bad news. In anticipation of this latest catastrophe, Cromwell steadied himself against the wall.

_Your Majesty,_

_I write to inform you that I have acquiesced Pontefract. The pilgrims overwhelmed us in number. God save and keep Your Majesty._

_Lord Darcy_

Cromwell folded up his hands into his robes so no one would see his hands tremble as he made his way back to the main hall. He bit down into his cheeks to keep himself from yelling out that the house was about to burn down and every man to see after himself. As he wound his way through the narrow passage, he grasped the jacket of one of his clerks.

"Go to Queen's rooms and fetch my wife. Tell her to meet me in my rooms in a half hour," Cromwell told him. The boy looked at him, questioning. But, Cromwell was never in a mood to explain himself, least of all now.

"Go. Now."

With a nose for danger, Rich had sniffed him out again. Rich glanced from Darcy's latest letter, to Cromwell's pallid face, and back to the letter again.

_"_Richard, I am putting you in charge of defenses of the city, we shall need to organize new levies. Send word to every lord and gentleman to be ready with his power. Take all the weapons, harness and ordinance you need from the Tower." Cromwell dropped his head, adding almost as an aside, "Buy more…if you need to…from merchants in the city.''

The shock would not allow Rich to believe what he was hearing, he would not believe what he was hearing. "Then it's true, we are in trouble?" Rich pressed.

Cromwell averted Rich's eyes, trying to fabricate some reason for Rich to be of good cheer. But, just as his capacity to lie failed him, he was rescued by Sir Francis.

Sir Francis burst forth out of the king's privy chamber. "Master Cromwell, the king will see you now."

Discreetly, Cromwell pulled a small vial of peppermint oil from his pocket. Quick as a wink, he dabbed a little under his nostrils. As he filed into Henry's bedchamber with Francis and Rich, he noted with bleak humor as Rich nearly doubled over from the stench of Henry's decaying flesh.

"I have had a letter from Lord Darcy. He says that he is in great danger from the rebels and cannot maintain his resistance!" Henry ranted. He lay prostrate, completely naked, sweating like a farmhand and looking like a corpse. "And yet, he holds a castle, a great stronghold. Does he not mean to stand firm against these traitors!?" the king demanded in disbelief. Henry thrashed around, punching at the mattress. "Christ, there are evil smells about. Evil smells! We must quit this place for Greenwich."

Cromwell swallowed hard and gripped the letter from Darcy. "Your Majesty, I have just been told that the rebels have just entered the town of Pontefract with overwhelming numbers."

Henry beckoned Cromwell closer to the bedside. In spite of the peppermint oil, Cromwell still breathed with restraint. Henry's eyes widened.

"Mister Cromwell," Henry began. Under the circumstances, Cromwell chose to ignore his temporary demotion. "Pontefract is the gateway to the south. It has great strategic importance." Henry's voice grew quiet, the way it did when he prepared to let loose a storm of rage. "You will write a letter to lord Darcy at once, you will tell him that I expect him to hold that castle at all costs!"

Cromwell bowed low, hoping to make a quick escape because he was not sure how much longer he could hold his breath.

Henry grabbed at his robe with a sweaty palm. "But what of the royal army? What are they doing to crush this rebellion? Where is his grace, the duke of Suffolk?" Henry panted like a sick animal. "What in God's name are these men doing?"

**

For once in her life, Elizabeth was on time. A man in Cromwell's livery had appeared in the queen's rooms and told Elizabeth that her husband needed to see her in private. Cromwell _never _sent for her during the day. Either a tide of afternoon lust had swept up her husband, or something had gone so seriously wrong that he needed to pull her from Jane's service for the day. Her stomach fluttered. She rolled some mint and rosemary around on her tongue. About to settle into the window seat, she jumped when Cromwell slipped through the door and shut it silently behind him.

"Thomas, what is happening?"

"Keep your voice down!" he hissed sharply. "We need to be ready. If the rebels come any further south, we're leaving." He brushed past her and began pulling down the tapestries. He felt along the wood paneling, searching for a particular groove. When he found it, he used his dagger to pry back the wood.

"What do you mean, 'we are leaving?'" she asked, still not understanding.

"Christ's blood, Lissie, I told you to keep your voice down." Cromwell reached his arm past the loosened panel, fumbling for a moment, until he jerked out a leather satchel. As it hit the floor, she could hear the unmistakable clinking of coins. Next, he flew at her jewelry box, netting out the most expensive pieces. His hands, dripping with pearls, diamonds, and emeralds, shoved the precious bundle towards Elizabeth.

"Here. Take these."

"Thomas, what do you mean we might leave?" she took care to whisper this time.

"Because, Lissie," he said softly, slowly, "because when your house burns down you grab what you can carry and you run." Like a man possessed, he attacked the velvet cushions with his dagger. He tore the stuffing apart and reached in, pulling out a few bars of bullion. "If the rebels move southward still, the King will close the ports, and we will be trapped on this Godforsaken island." He stood back, admiring the chaos. "Well, that's a start."

Afraid of appearing even dimmer, Elizabeth decided not to ask a third time what was going on.

"Get together your sewing things," he ordered. "Start prying those stones out of their setting. Hem them into your stays, my robes, your skirts. Quilt a few of the coins into each of the pillows, or even your bodices. This needs to be done by tonight. Understand?"

"But-"

He rounded on her. "God damn it, Lissie! Just do as you're told."

Elizabeth winced like a kicked dog when he swept past her without another word of explanation.


	10. Chapter 10

**A/N—Graphic Content at the end; blood and angst. This is your informed consent.**

On that night, as so many others, Cromwell found himself rowing against the tide. He dragged one of his undersecretaries, Ralph Sadler, along for company and protection on his errand that took him into the night and through the vapors of the Thames. Ralph had become something of a reluctant protégé ever since that bright spring day when Cromwell called his sweetest, most guileless looking clerk into his office, handed the young man a priceless diamond necklace and said, "Take this to the queen's sister, she should know what it means; let the gems do the talking." Ralph flushed and stammered, reminding Cromwell of his own son, Gregory.

Tonight, Cromwell had instructed Ralph not to wear Cromwell's newly granted coat of arms, but instead to wear only a black doublet. In kind, Cromwell boarded the little boat without the seal of his office or his cross of St. George. Any other boatman passing them would dismiss the two men as just another merchant and his apprentice—and row on without asking any questions.

Cromwell stopped rowing, rubbed at his shoulders, and motioned that Ralph should take over. As Ralph carefully negotiated the changing of the guard, he asked: "I still do not understand sir, why can we trust him? Why can we not ask the king's physicians?"

Cromwell pulled his arms through his jacket and held the orange pomander against his nose to guard against the stench of the Thames. "Because, Ralph," he tiredly explained, "the king's doctors will only tell us what they think we want to hear. Worse than lawyers really…"

He and Ralph shared a smile; Ralph was training as a barrister in Cromwell's offices. And, like any lawyer, Ralph refused to be turned from the scent by a clever anecdote. "But, sir," he pressed, "why this doctor? Why do we seek him?"

"Because this is a man with secrets. And men with secrets are inherently more trustworthy than those without. Because a man with his own secrets knows the currency of discretion."

Momentarily, the vague answer satisfied Ralph. In all honesty, Cromwell could not recall how he first heard about the Venetian doctor in London that attended to the rich merchants and their wives, mistresses, and daughters. His spies gleaned that the Venetian was no Venetian at all, but a discreet Muslim from the Turkish court who studied medicine at the universities in Cairo and Baghdad. A gifted man who had allowed the current of the Mediterranean to wash him ashore where it would. And as it happened, this young man must have quickly discerned that his forbidden knowledge, carried over on the backs of camels and traders over the silk routes, would make him a fortune in Europe. New men--men like Cromwell, men like Cromwell's merchant friends-- paid in gold without haggling so that the Venetian/Turkish/Moorish miracle worker might work his heresy and save the lives of women three day into labor. Some said this young doctor could even cut open the mother's belly to deliver the child without killing the woman. In any event, none of his merchant friends would let English doctors or midwives near their families. Thomas, they told him, Thomas, when it is time for that pretty wife of yours, send for no other doctor but this one.

Innocent and oblivious, Ralph rowed on, pausing every now and then to lament his lack of a bride. "So, you see, sir," Ralph said, "I shall never marry her now. She says her father disapproves of my humble family."

A familiar story. Cromwell burrowed his chin into his jacket. "Well, Ralph, I can always have a word with your sweetheart's papa, and see if that—"

"Oh, please sir, please I beg you don't!" Ralph, permanently mortified, blushed further crimson. "Begging your pardon, sir, but I cannot marry the lady if I know that she only signs the marriage contract because someone tells her to."

Cromwell hid a smile; that was something Gregory would say, too. As for himself, he would have dragged Elizabeth down the aisle by her hair had Edward not done the dragging for him. Cromwell measured Ralph's plump, pleasant face and strawberry hair against his own lean, hard cut features. He hoped that for every man like himself, there were two others like Ralph and Gregory. Two fawns to balance out every wolf.

As they rowed further and further from London, the traffic on the water became sparse, and soon next to extinct. All save another small boat with a single passenger. On a hunch, Cromwell signaled with his lantern, and the other boat signaled back.

"Good. That's him. Row us over, Master Ralph." He noticed Ralph was looking more discomfited than usual. "Oh, don't fret. He does not speak English, and you do not speak Italian, so I promise you that you will sleep soundly in your ignorance tonight," he added.

As Ralph tied the two boats together, the Venetian Turk pushed back his hood and looked guardedly at Ralph. "And he is…?" the young doctor asked in Italian.

Cromwell waved his hand in dismissal. "Don't worry, he doesn't speak Italian."

The clouds rolled past the full moon and for a moment, the moon light illuminated the doctor's features. He did not look much over thirty, pale skin, a mop of black curls, and pale honey colored eyes. Far from wearing any fanciful depiction of Turkish court dress, the doctor wore a non-descript black overcoat. He extended his palm to Cromwell, and Cromwell duly placed a pouch of silver in the open palm.

The man's pale eyes widened in surprise. "I was actually offering my hand to introduce myself, but-"

"But the less we know about each other, the better," Cromwell cut in.

"I think we already know plenty about one another. I know who you are: your Florentine friends here in London told me. A Lutheran and a Mohammedan meet on the river: it sounds like the start of a poor joke. Suffice it to say, if King Henry really knew what was in both of our hearts, he would burn us at the same stake. But you did not row all the way up here, against the tide, with a small fortune in silver, to unravel our secret lives, did you?"

Cromwell hated having to come out and plainly ask for what he wanted. But, it seemed the lawyer would have to fold and show his cards to the doctor.

"My king's leg much affects him," Cromwell sighed. "Sometimes the wound will heal over. But inevitably, it swells, and crests like a hill. The skin grows taut and feverish, until it bursts."

The doctor nodded at each grim description, parsing out the symptoms. "What comes out of the wound when it bursts?"

"Pus, blood, black rotted flesh. Splinters of bone."

"The smell?"

"Putrid death."

"What do the king's physicians do?"

"Apply poultices, cut further into the wound to keep it open."

"And you want to know…?" he looked at Cromwell quizzically.

"I want to know if it will ever get better. If his physicians are going about this all wrong. If…" Cromwell dropped his voice to a whisper, even though they were speaking in Italian. "If this will end up killing the king."

"It may surprise you to know, but your king's condition is the talk of doctors around the world."

Cromwell groaned at the thought of King Henry as a medical fascination, a novel case study in places like Constantinople.

"So," the young physician continued, "I am forced to concede that your English doctors can do no better. The wound needs to stay open, otherwise the toxins will just build up, eat away at the healthy flesh, costing the king his leg, if not his life. I cannot say for sure—since I cannot examine the king—but if this ulcer were going to heal, it would have done so by now."

Cromwell slumped at the hopeless diagnosis. So the stink of death, and the king's foul temper, was here to stay at the English court.

"His doctors can leech the wound, apply maggots to clear away the dead flesh. Better to look to managing the pain."

"I wish you had better news for me," Cromwell said miserably. The doctor shrugged.

"I am a doctor. I tell people what they have to hear. You lawyers just tell them what they want to hear." He cocked his head sympathetically. "There is something else?"

Cromwell toyed with his emerald wedding ring. He could not meet the younger man's unflinchingly honest gaze. "It's a delicate matter."

"A delicate matter. Ah, wife or mistress?"

"Wife. I don't keep mistresses," Cromwell snorted defensively. The doctor shrugged again. Women-- of good repute or not—and their health made up the bulk of his business.

"Your wife is with child?" the physician asked intuitively.

"Three months. But she's ill. I have never seen a woman this sick with child. My first wife--our three children—was nothing like this. She can barely keep any food in her, any drink. And it is not getting better, only worse."

"But is she at least growing stouter in spite of the sickness? Is her belly growing, do her breasts swell?"

Cromwell rubbed at his eyes, wiping his hands over his face at the humiliation of having to recount his Lissie's body to a stranger, doctor or no.

"The thing is, her little belly grows, but the rest of her wastes away."

"Listen, you would not believe the adversity under which I have seen women carry a pregnancy to full term. But, if things get worse, her body will start to ravage itself to feed the growing child. Maybe the sickness is not due to the child. Cannot be easy for her, sister to the queen, but married to you. Everyone knows her family wants England to return to Rome, but you want to, well I'm not quite sure what you want to do with England."

Cromwell's eyes sharpened into daggers. "What has this to do with anything?"

"Your wife is being pulled in two opposite directions at once. That would distress any woman under the best of circumstances. For the sake of her health, I am surprised you have not withdrawn from court. Send her to the country: fresh air, clean water."

"Are suggesting I have been a negligent husband?" Cromwell raised his voice. Ralph could not understand a single word, but he understood that the tone had just turned sharp. Cromwell softened his voice. "She is sister to the queen, she cannot leave."

"I give you my advice as a physician, not because I mean to pry." He turned and rummaged around in the sack next to him. "Here." He handed Cromwell a piece of ginger root. "Boil this with some fennel seeds. Might help with the vomiting. And she should not be drinking wine or ale, just clean, boiled water. I wish I had better tidings for you tonight." Again, that apologetic shrug. "Listen, however it goes with your wife—good, bad, indifferent—send for me. Keep those filthy midwives out of it. All they do is stand around, boil water, and swap tales of nightmare births."

**

Jane looked up from her sewing at sound of skirts swishing towards her.

"Lady Rochford?"

"Madam, the king is still confined to his chambers by his physicians' orders, but sends his regrets and hopes you are well." Jane Boleyn clasped her hands and smiled blandly. Elizabeth shook her head. Physicians' orders? Do those orders include Ursula's mouth around the royal cock? But, she kept her peace and concentrated on the shirts she and other ladies were sewing for the poor.

Jane tried to smile but another night away from Henry's bed unsettled her. "I worry about him so much, especially after such a time," Jane said. Just last night, Cromwell had told Elizabeth that pilgrims were now thirty thousand strong.

Boldly, Lady Rochford replied, "Your majesty is right to do so. These rebels are nothing but villains; they are totally alienated from true religion." At that, Elizabeth tore her eyes from her sewing and held up her hand, a universal gesture of cease and desist. Jane shifted uncomfortably, trying to neutralize her facial expressions. Unconsciously, her hand drifted to the jeweled crucifix she wore.

Lady Rochford blundered on: "They want to take us back to the dark days of ignorance and superstition by force!"

Elizabeth had to wonder if she might find some bribe of Cromwell's were she to grab Jane Boleyn by the ankles, turn her upside down, and shake out her pockets; Cromwell had told Elizabeth that same line, almost verbatim while they dined a few nights ago. Well, at least she watched him dine while she pushed food around on her plate.

Lady Rochford ended on a high note "I hope to God they will soon be overcome!"

"Yes," Jane replied neutrally. Changing the subject, Jane said, "Lady Rochford, I have something that I wish you to arrange for me, something I'm sure will give the king a great deal of pleasure."

Beaming at the clear favor show towards her, instead of Elizabeth, Lady Rochford sauntered off. Once she was out of ear-shot, Elizabeth scooted her chair towards Jane.

"Do not even think about it," Elizabeth said without taking her eyes off of her hemming.

"Oh, what's that?" Jane asked distantly.

"You _know_." Elizabeth dropped all pretenses. "We all want the Lady Mary back at court, but can we not wait until things calm in the north."

"This is her rightful place, she deserves it back—"

"Jane, I do not doubt that," Elizabeth interrupted.

Jane threw her sewing down. "Lissie," she said firmly, "That girl is so in need of love, so desperate. That kind of desperation—when one has lived too long without any gentleness—that kind of desperation will harden the heart, poison the mind."

Elizabeth clipped her thread with her teeth. Jane was no doubt right. She needed look no further than her own husband.

"Besides," Jane reasoned, "it would please the king." Elizabeth would be the first to admit her sister had an uncanny sense about matters of the heart.

"But," Elizabeth pushed back. "I am asking you not to proceed for my own sake. Think of how it will appear: in the midst of a Catholic uprising, the Papist Seymours restore the Lady Mary? It would only embolden the rebellion."

Jane tossed her sewing aside. "This is not about politics! This is about a daughter who needs her father, who needs a family."

Elizabeth reached out and touched Jane's knee. "Jane, I am asking you not to do this for my own sake. Think about the trouble this will cause for me with my own husband. Please, Jane. Hold off for a while."

"Lissie, I…"

"Jane!" Elizabeth's voice inadvertently raised. She lowered her head while Jane's eyes widened at the insolence. "Please," Elizabeth said quietly. "Please. He suspects me. He suspects all of us. He confiscates my letters, corners me about who I write to and why. I write only to wives I used to know through my first husband, but Cromwell is convinced they are coded references. He is suspicious if I ask him for money. He wants to know what it's for, why do I need coin instead of letters of credit…".

Afraid she had said too much, Elizabeth fell silent. Her cheeks burned at the admission of the cloud of paranoia she lived under. Any letters coming from the north, Cromwell would intercept, read them, and then hound her.

Tutting to herself, Jane picked up her needle work again. "She can rule. Mary can rule. You know it. I know it," she said so quietly that Elizabeth could barely hear her over the pop and sizzle of the fire.

**

Elizabeth was rolling an olive around on her plate when Cromwell came in and slapped a bundle of letters down in front of her.

"What's all of this?" he demanded. He poured himself a glass of wine before sitting down to dine.

"Paper?" she offered.

"Think again." He skewered a few slices of meat on to his plate. Cromwell always dismissed the servants once the meal was on the table. He once told Elizabeth that he did not like too many ears around them. So, if she wanted more wine then she ought to pour it herself.

Elizabeth popped the olive into her mouth, slowly sucking the fruit off the pit. She thumbed through the letters addressed to her. All of them from north of Doncaster—where 30,000 pilgrims were mustering. Some of the seals she recognized on sight: noblewomen she had once known when she was a child bride playing at house in a damp castle.

Delicately she spit the olive pit into her napkin. "I don't understand the harm. Just frantic wives writing to me, unsure of what to do. No tenants to work the fields, shear the sheep."

"Some of their men are implicated in treason. Yet, you see no harm in freely corresponding with these women? 30,000 rebels are mustering in Doncaster, and there is no harm?"

Elizabeth tugged at her bodice. "Well, maybe there is, there is some case to be made for…suspending the Reform—what I mean to say is…"

Cromwell's eyes went from blue to obsidian. He knew exactly what she meant to say.

Elizabeth inhaled deeply. Nothing to do but trip and fall into the hole she'd dug for herself. "Perhaps, suspending the dissolution of religious houses?"

Cromwell said nothing, but folded his arms and studied her. She wished he would shout, pound the table, give her some sort of signal when she was about to fall off of the ledge of careless talk and into treason.

So, she stumbled on. "The abbeys provide charity, shelter, food. They employ tenants, servants…what will happen to them if the abbeys are dissolved, where will they go?"

"That's none of my concern."

"Thomas, please. Those institutions are the only thing that stands between the poor and starvation."

Cromwell's jaw twitched with the effort of keeping his temper in check. "If those traitors starve, it will be because they negligently left the harvest out to rot while they went on their frolic and detour. Not because some greedy monk lost his gold chest." He finished his wine in two long gulps. Wiping his mouth, he said, "They are brothels to the conscience, selling absolution, purposefully obscuring what the Bible actually says with incense smoke and pretty pictures of saints. And empty ritual."

"It's not empty," Elizabeth said softly.

Cromwell's voice dropped low, quiet, and dangerous. "Pray tell, Lissie, enlighten me, illuminate the theology for me."

Her ears burned with the mockery and her stomach knotted. "Sometimes there's comfort in the ritual," she said to her hands folded in her lap. "Maybe some people need that: the Latin, the incense, the Holy Mother, to leave the temporal and reach for the divine."

"No, what people need is to be freed from guilt and superstition. "

"Thomas, I do not understand-"

"Clearly."

Elizabeth swallowed the low-blow and continued. "I do not understand how there cannot be both. Why can men and women not worship according to their own conscience. Why must it be one or the other?" The silence sat heavy on her shoulders. When she could bear it no more, she peered up from her lap to find Cromwell staring at her, lips pressed thin and a single eye-brow arched in disbelief.

She started to open her mouth, but he held up his hand, palm facing her. "That's enough. I've sent men to the Tower for an ounce of what you have just said. Keep your opinions to yourself. I don't ever want to hear that kind of talk around me, or in my rooms ever again."

Elizabeth blinked back the tears forming in her eyes. "You liked me well enough when I spoke my mind."

**

The next evening, Henry was back on his feet. Eager to show off his renewed vigor, he strode into the great hall, throwing one leg out and then another, even as his face sweat with the pain. To her wry amusement, Elizabeth noted that the absence of Charles Brandon had left something of a hierarchical vacuum. Now her brother, Edward, and her husband dueled to establish themselves as the preeminent man at court. She watched Edward and Cromwell trail behind the king, each man trying to lengthen his stride just enough so that he would be the next man behind the king. As the king and his entourage rounded a corner and filed through an archway, Cromwell took advantage and squeezed past Edward. Christ's blood, Elizabeth thought. This is like watching dogs race.

Jane stood at the center of the hall, resplendent in her ivory and teal gown. Elizabeth had spent the better part of the day bathing Jane, rubbing perfume into her skin, and carefully curling, brushing, then re-curling Jane's long wheat colored hair. They both wanted her to look like a goddess of the harvest: fertile, lovely, and worth bedding over a used mistress.

Henry bowed deeply to Jane. "Madame."

Jane just stood, smiling, seeing nothing except Henry. "It makes me happy to see you much improved."

"I am. I have a good physician." Henry cast a sidelong glance at Ursula, which Jane wisely chose to ignore. "Nevertheless," Henry continued "I intend that we should visit the shrine of St. Thomas Becket and give our thanks."

"I have arranged for something else, which I think will make you very happy."

For a moment, Elizabeth's vision faded to a single point of light. She feared she might pass out. Please, please, Elizabeth prayed. Please do not let Jane have done what I think she has.

From somewhere behind Jane and her ladies, a voice bellowed: "Your Majesty, the Lady Mary Tudor."

Instinctively, Elizabeth tried to find her husband's face in the sea of courtiers. When she located him, he had blanched as white as snow. As a measure of his discomfort, the endlessly polite Thomas Cromwell whose sense of etiquette never failed him, was so stunned that he forgot to bow to the Lady Mary. Feeling the weight of her eyes on him, Cromwell met her gaze. He appeared confused, almost hurt. He mouthed the words, 'did you know?'She minutely shook her head. His eyes hardened, skeptical.

Mary dropped to the floor in a deep curtsy. "I ask your majesty for his blessing."

Henry offered his hand and pulled her to standing. "My own daughter," he said. Henry led her around like a dancer. "May I present you to her Majesty Queen Jane?"

Always unpredictable, Henry turned form the tender moment and proclaimed angrily: "I remember that some of you were desirous that I put this jewel to death."

At that, Cromwell paled to alabaster and his eyes never left Elizabeth's. She tried to make her way towards him, but her journey to contrition was interrupted when Mary collapsed. Well, that's laying it on a little thick, Elizabeth thought.

Henry took Mary in his arms. "I've caught you. You're safe. Be of good cheer, for I swear now that nothing will go against you." Henry kissed her hand and walked on. Cromwell stood still as a statue, while Edward paused long enough to smirk at the ambush, and then he followed after the king.

Elizabeth took advantage when Jane pulled Mary into conversation, and she set off after her husband. By now, he had turned on his heel and was retreating with as much grace as he could. She hurried after him.

"Thomas! Please, I did not know. Please, this is not how it looks," she called after him. Instead of turning to face her, he lengthened his stride. She picked up her skirts and ran, grabbing at his velvet robe. "Thomas, please, please I did not betray you," she implored. Then he did turn to face her, only to shake her hand off of his robes, as if she were a filthy peasant grasping for alms. "Thomas," she repeated. He straightened himself, and walked on, as if he had no idea who she was.

She slumped against the wall paneling, at a loss. Her stomach turned and churned, and her throat tightened, as if preparing for another bout of sickness. She inhaled and exhaled rapidly. She reached in her pocket, tore off a few mint leaves, and chewed them while she regained her composure. The chewing leveled out her breath. She wiped away a few tears and slapped some color back into her face. As she returned to dine, she caught Francis in conversation with the king.

Henry leaned in and said: "They say Mary is innocent. Knows nothing of unclean speech or thought. Do you believe that? That anybody could be that innocent. Go and find out."

She fell in step behind Francis and listened as he asked the Lady Mary if she liked games, because if she did, there was a new one at court, an old country practice.

**

In her dread of returning to her bed and having to face Cromwell, Elizabeth instead sat up late playing cards with Francis and Tom. Her brother could not get enough of Francis's latest encounter with the Lady Mary, despite Francis having told the story at least twice.

"No! No! Again Sir Francis! But this time, Lissie, you be the Lady Mary, and Sir Francis…well you are yourself!" Tom clapped his hands.

"This is to be a theatrical production?" Elizabeth asked.

Tom nodded vigorously. "I need to see this otherwise I won't believe it."

Francis threw back his cape, ready to perform. "Now, Lissie stand up, but turn your back to me. So you see, Master Seymour, I approach the Lady from behind—you know how I am prone to do so…"

Tom sputtered in laughter, but Elizabeth rolled her eyes.

"Yes, so I clear my throat. And, I sweep a perfect bow, just like this. I ask the Lady's forgiveness. So now, you Lissie, you in turn say?"

"'Jesus asks us to forgive everyone,'" Elizabeth repeated monotonously. Tom clapped his hand over his mouth, heaving with laughter because he knew what was coming next.

"So," Francis continued "I ask the Lady if she likes games. And, like any woman, of course she says yes. I say, 'There is a new game at court, an old country practice.'" Francis paused in the story just to antagonize Tom, who banged his wine glass against the table and rolled around in hysterics.

"So, I say, 'there is an old country practice. It's called cunnilingus.'"

At that even Elizabeth could not hold her comport together and she crumpled over in a heap of giggles. Once she got the worst of the giggling out of her system, she straightened herself up, remembering her part.

"Oh, Tom, so then Lady Mary says, 'I think you are making fun of me Sir Francis-'"

"Which I was most certainly not," Francis interrupted. Tom made an exaggeratedly sad face: poor innocent Mary. "I was certainly not making fun of her."

"Course, we are now," Elizabeth observed. The three of them lost all control and laughed until they hiccupped.

As they resumed their game of cards, Francis patted her hand. "Do not fret about tonight. Our Lord Privy Seal may have been unseated in the joust tonight, but that was not your doing."

Elizabeth threw down one card and picked up another. "No matter, I will bear the blame."

"In any event," Tom said " We are pleased to shelter you as a fugitive tonight. You have not been this fun since…well since you were married."

"Don't hold it against her, Master Seymour. Women always get a little dull when they marry. Dull and fat—saving Edward's wife of course." Francis examined her with his good eye. "At least you did not get fat, quite the contrary. Does Master Cromwell not feed you over in his own little fiefdom?"

Tom threw down his cards and collected what little remained of his money. "I'm for my bed."

"And I am for Elizabeth's," Francis quipped. She reached out and slapped his hand. "Oh, don't look like that Lissie. Run off to your husband, get down on your knees and-"

Elizabeth held up a hand. "Sir Francis, mind how you go."

"What I meant to say, was beg for forgiveness, on your knees. Oh, he'll have a rough shagging in store for you, judging from the look he gave you when Mary came trotting out. But tomorrow morning, you will get up and dust off your shoulders. And you and your husband will be as you were. Which is…?"

" Now I call him Thomas, instead of Cromwell, so I suppose that is progress," Elizabeth mused.

Francis slapped his cards down and stood. "A love story for the ages. Good night to you both." As Francis and Tom filed past her, each planted a chaste kiss on her cheek, leaving her alone to face the music and dance.

**

While she wove her way through antechamber after antechamber , she could not shake the giggles. The image of Sir Francis solemnly asking the guileless Lady Mary if she….Elizabeth almost doubled over again in hysterics. She relished the laughter as a small miracle in itself, and she crossed herself in thanks. By the time she pushed open the door to her bedchamber, she almost forgot about the debacle of Mary's sudden return. Almost. Because as soon as she crossed the threshold, Cromwell slammed the door behind her. He crossed the distance between them in two strides. Gripping her elbows, he walked her backwards until her head hit the wall with a whip-like crack.

"You did this, didn't you? Did you bring her back just to spite me? Did someone pay you? The Emperor? The Spanish? Northern Lords? Answer me!" he barked at her.

His questions came too fast, and the accusations piled on top of one another. Still dazed from his ambush, she had no idea how to respond to any of this.

"I knew nothing. I swear. I mean I knew that the queen wanted to bring Mary back, but-" she began in earnest.

Cromwell shook her. "You knew the queen desired to bring Mary to live at court, and you said nothing to me of it?" He throttled her as if he could shake the truth loose from her.

"I, I, I did not think Jane would actually….I told her now was not the time…"

He dug his fingertips into the soft flesh under her silk sleeves. "You both _talked about this_? You had a conversation with the queen about something like this…you choose not to tell me?" His voice grew quiet; he was at his most lethal when he withdrew into himself and his blue eyes became black pools. "What else don't you tell me?" he asked.

"Thomas, she is my sister. We grew up sharing confidences. I doubt she tells the king everything I say to her." Elizabeth tried to soothe away his paranoia.

"Have you been stringing me along these past months? Moaning like a whore for me at night, while you plot against me during the day with your sister, your brothers--is that your angle?"

"Thomas, please-"

"That's it isn't it? Playing my heart like a fiddle, so I will be blind to your treachery? Are you in contact with the rebels? With Aske? With Darcy?"

His interrogation picked up in speed and intensity. No way to get a word in edge wise. As he trapped her in the corner, strong hands gripping her arms, Elizabeth felt as though she had tumbled down a steep hill, and she rolled faster and faster, the building inertia preventing her from righting herself.

"Thomas, listen to me."

"Why should I?" he spat. "Why else would the queen restore Mary, if not to send a signal to the rebels that their sin is holy in the eyes of the queen? Embolden the rebellion by restoring the Catholic princess to demonstrate to the rebels that their overthrow of the Reformation and the executions of Satan's messengers', Cromwell and Cranmer, will be amply rewarded."

"It's not always politics. Jane felt pity for Mary. She wanted Mary to have her father again. Jane did it out of kindness, because she saw pain and she wanted to heal it," Elizabeth snapped. "There you have it. A conspiracy of sympathy and tenderness. I do not even know why I bother to explain such a thing to you. I am appealing to emotions I know you do not even have."

He dropped his arms and stepped away from her, his anger deflated by the pain her words caused. "Is that why you will not love me? Because of these emotions you believe I do not have?" he asked faintly. "Would to God it was because you thought I was too old, too ugly for you." His lips pressed together in anguish. " I shower you with gifts, hoping for a smile, a soft word. Night after night, I try to satisfy you, pleasure you. I am the father of your child, and you think I have no capacity for sympathy or tenderness?"

She reached out for his hand, but he pulled away from her. "I am tired of this fight. Will you not come to bed?" she asked, hoping for a tender ending that would dispel his suspicions.

"No, I have work to do. I will leave you be."

**

The following morning, Elizabeth woke up alone to the sound of her maids pouring water for her bath. Cromwell's side of the bed was completely undisturbed. Nothing to suggest that he had ever returned to their bed last night, not even the faint, clean soap smell he usually left behind on the bedding. He had propped a note at her bedside. Instead of an apology, the note contained a single sentence saying he was going with the king to inspect the defenses being erected on the coast. Back in a week.

She scrubbed herself down quickly. As her maids helped her dry and lace up her gown, a strange, heavy pain settled where her heart ought to be. She felt a child-like guilt, the sort of remorse she used to feel when she was an eight year old girl cheating her sister at marbles: the unsatisfactory, unearned victory. Now, standing in the dark blue silk gown embroidered with silver thread, she experienced the same sensation. She shook her head at herself. Happily accepting Cromwell's gifts without any gratitude for the giver. Perhaps he was right: she had strung him along, taking his gifts with no intention of ever letting him near her heart. Twenty-two years old, going on eight—and still cheating at marbles.

As Alice latched the priceless diamond choker around her neck—the same jewels that precipitated the whole messy business with Cromwell—her heart ached all the more. Elizabeth feared that she had completely misjudged her husband and his intentions towards her. She'd utterly dismissed every new jewel, every new gown he presented her with as glorified bribes. Last night, he told her he hoped for a smile, a soft word. At best she had given him her indifference. At worst, her contempt. Yet, day after day, he spent a queen's ransom on her. Not to buy her conscience off, but because money was the only conduit he knew how to use. Some men knew how to use poetry, music, or art to endear themselves to women. Money was Thomas Cromwell's medium, the language he spoke best. Elizabeth looked at herself in the full length mirror: an ice princess of blue and silver silk, and diamonds that sparkled like snowflakes. Perhaps he thought that a combination of enough gold and time would chip away at that ice. Each gift had been like an ambassador to this spoiled ice princess, each gift more than the thing itself, an invitation to a connection substantiated in flesh, not flighty love poetry.

After breaking her fast in Jane's rooms, Elizabeth accompanied her and the rest of the ladies to a thanksgiving mass. Apparently, Charles Brandon had some success in negotiating with the rebels a few days before. At least enough to disband thirty thousand men. With the return of Lady Mary, Elizabeth was no longer the senior woman in the queen's rooms. So, as the women filed into the chapel, Mary stood beside Jane in the front pew, while Elizabeth stood behind them. Unfortunately, Anne Stanhope sidled in next to her. As they waited for Bishop Gardiner, Anne hungrily eyed the exquisite embroidery of Elizabeth's gown. She reached out to stroke the tiny seed pearls sewn into the silver fleur de lis.

Elizabeth slapped her hand away. "Anne, look with your eyes, not with your hands," she mumbled crossly.

Anne had a reply at the ready, but was thwarted as Bishop Gardiner began the service. Elizabeth rose and knelt, knelt and rose as she was bid. She sleep-walked through the service, instead repeating last night over and over in her head. The heartbreak written across Cromwell's face. Her self-reproach for not even realizing he had a heart until she broke it. The agonizing wait for him to return to bed, and when he did not, the apprehension of which bed he actually spent the night in. Elizabeth toyed with her emerald wedding ring, pulling it off and pushing it back on again. Perhaps in a week, her husband might…

Elizabeth's thoughts ground to a screeching halt as she felt a rush of warm, thick liquid sliding down the inside of her leg. For an awful moment, she thought she had wet herself. But as the liquid slid down to her shoes, she discreetly pulled her skirt to side and saw blood beginning to pool in her silver shoes. Her head shot up. Anxiously, she glanced around to see if anyone else was aware of her unfolding disaster. All eyes were on Bishop Gardiner. She peered over her bodice to check if the blood had stained the front of the dress, but the fabric was too dark to betray her. Her womb seized up with cramps, and she pinched her knees together, as if that would prevent the inevitable. She almost cried out in horror at the sensation of a new rush of blood, followed by something more sinister. In addition to the blood leaving her, she could feel something else, a mass, a substance. Elizabeth scrunched her eyes shut. Please, God, Please not like this, she prayed. On cue, she knelt with the rest of the chapel, crossed herself. Except she was not praying for Charles Brandon. She prayed for herself. Prayed that miraculously, she might be able walk out of the chapel undetected.

Her hopes evaporated when she stood. Not only had the blood collected in her heels, but it ran over and dripped on to the immaculate marble floor. Her womb cramped again, sending a fresh wave of blood and that awful clotted substance.

"Oh my God."

Elizabeth turned to see Anne watching the blood collect around Elizabeth's feet in stunned horror. In a tiny gesture, Elizabeth pinched the back of Anne's palm.

"Anne, for the love of God, stopping looking down. If we don't look down, no one will notice."

"Mother of God," Anne whispered, still staring.

The room began to spin, but Elizabeth clawed to the pew in front of her. "Anne, do not stare. Just walk close behind me as we leave," she mumbled out of the side of her mouth.

Anne squeaked a little, but she tore her eyes from bloodied mess gathering around Elizabeth's feet. She glanced across the aisle to see Edward watching them intently. He must have guessed something was off judging by Anne's terrified face and Elizabeth's vice like grip on the pew in front of her. As the service closed, Elizabeth squared her shoulders, mentally preparing herself. To her credit, Anne fell in step right behind, both their heads held high to keep the attention away from Elizabeth's blood soaked shoes. Elizabeth's vision began to pulsate and she lost the sensation of up, down, sideways, left, right. She just kept putting one foot in front of the other, while Anne hugged her like a shadow, so that no one could see the dark stain on the seat of her dress. We are almost there, almost there, Elizabeth told herself. But her world began to collapse in upon itself as her sight faded to a single point of light. She staggered, and on reflex, she grabbed out at Anne's long French sleeve to steady herself. Just before her world faded to complete dark, her knees buckled and her ribs heaved. Anne disgustedly shoved her away, and Elizabeth realized that she had just vomited all over Anne—who then shrieked and pointed towards Elizabeth.

The last thing she saw was Edward running away from her and dragging Jane out of the chapel. Bishop Gardiner backed away, crossing himself at the sight of the queen's sister, collapsed on the floor of the house of God, her bloodied skirts akimbo and vomit dripping from her mouth. The world went black, but she felt Anne's ice cold fingers on her neck, working the clasp of the necklace open. The gems slid from her neck.

Rich watched the scene unfold with the sort of detachment that accompanies every event that stretches human credulity. He tried to fight his way through the throng of gaping ladies and morbidly curious gentlemen. He could not fight the tide, and the mass of bodies pushed him further and further back. Rich could not even drive his stocky frame across the aisle to where Edward had Jane by the elbow. Jane kept looking over her shoulder, shouting, "Lissie! Lissie! Oh my God, someone fetch help!"

Rich called out to Edward, but he did not acknowledge Rich. Edward half-guided, half-dragged Jane away from the appalling scene. Jane squirmed in his grasp, but he just tightened his grip. Rich tried to follow, but he decided that Cromwell would be furious if he found out that his right hand man went pandering after the queen instead of rescuing Elizabeth from the pack of wolves that had surrounded her. Shamelessly, Rich stood up on one of the pews, surveying the battlefield. Over the sea of hoods and feathered caps, Rich lost Elizabeth in the chaos. He did not relocate her until two of Gardiner's men forced their way into the crowds, dragging Elizabeth out, each man with one arm under her elbows. Her head lolled around as they hauled the queen's sister out as if she were a slaughtered hog. Her dress dragged blood across chapel floor like red paint across a canvas. The crowd closed in around them and she disappeared.

Rich jumped down from the pew, about ready to set off in pursuit. But, the stunned silence quickly gave way to vicious gossip that buzzed in and out of his ears. What kind of sin must she have committed? Oh, she has lain in sin with that messenger of Satan, Cromwell. See the power of the Holy Mass? See how it ruptured Cromwell's Lutheran bastard like a popped boil? The queen's sister has committed unnatural acts, yes, that must be it. Cromwell has introduced the queen's sister into the dark arts; why else would her unholy spawn destroy itself in the presence of the light of God, the light of Rome? Definitely evidence of her and her husband's witchcraft and heresy.

At the words witchcraft and heresy, Rich bowled his way through the on lookers and set off at a full sprint towards his offices. He needed to get a message to the king and Cromwell before vicious rumor did all the talking. Once at his desk, Rich scribbled out a note.

_Thomas,_

_Elizabeth has lost the child. I do not know if she be well or not. Gardiner's men took her away. For the love of God, come back as soon as you can. Already, the court suspects you both of sin and heresy. Edward has forsaken her. You are her only hope. _

_--Richard_

Rich sealed the letter and shoved it in the nose of the first clerk who walked by.

"Take two of my horses and ride out as fast you can. Put this note into the hands of the Lord Privy seal," Rich told him. "This is a matter of life and death. Here is money if the horses falter and you need new ones. I don't care if you ride all day and night, but get this to Master Cromwell as soon as humanly possible."

**

Elizabeth watched her world pass her by upside down. Instead of dragging her by her arms, Gardiner's men carried her as if in a litter: one man held her ankles while the other gripped her shoulders. Her eyes tracked the ceiling as they left the main galleries of the palace and wound their way deeper into secret chambers. Carved stone and painted murals gave way to rough hewn brick as the halls narrowed.

The man carrying her ankles kicked open a small round door to reveal Gardiner standing with two ancient women. The only light in the windowless room came from a hotly stoked fireplace. Elizabeth could barely breathe for the stifling heat. Her porters tossed her carelessly onto a single day bed—the only furniture in the otherwise bare room. She tucked her skirts between her legs and tried to right herself.

"Your Grace, Bishop Gardiner, please fetch my sister. She will be worrying about me," Elizabeth begged. Gardiner stepped forward and lightly touched her fingertips.

"My child," he said tiredly. "Your only concern should be the sin that has laid you so low today. Your only worry should be your confession; purge yourself. What have you done that God should strike you down like this?" His face, smooth as satin, betrayed neither his age nor emotion.

Elizabeth shook her head vigorously. "Your grace, I have done nothing. You know that I—with my family—we follow the old religion. I attend Mass with conviction, I—"

"Have you been corrupted, sweet little Lissie? Has that pompous devil Cromwell infected you with carnal sin, with Lutheran fornication?" Gardiner pressed.

In another time and place, Elizabeth might have laughed. Lutheran fornication? How was that supposed to be different than any other form of fornication in which a man took his pleasure off a woman?

"Have you been seduced by witchcraft, by sorcery?" Gardiner asked the most dangerous question of all. Elizabeth recoiled in shock and fear.

"No! No! I am innocent. I am innocent of any sin." Oh, God. How could she possibly defend herself against such base accusations? How did Anne Boleyn marshal a defense against incest?

Gardiner merely nodded, tilting his head as if he felt sorry for the queen's sister, sitting in a mess of blood and Cromwell's lost imp. He looked between the two crones who stank of ale and dried blood. He nodded to them and said: "Purify her, purge her soul and body of whatever foul blackness that devil Cromwell has impregnated her with."

"Bishop Gardiner! Bishop Gardiner! My sister is the queen of England! I will not be reduced to this!" she shouted. "My sister shall hear of this! My husband will see you on the rack for this!"

"Madame, control yourself. I am merely trying to save you—poor innocent lamb that you are—from yourself. These women are skilled in midwifery and witchtaking. If there be any blight, and evil spirit attached to you, they shall know of it." He left her without any indication that he still acknowledged her status as sister to the queen, wife to the Lord Privy Seal. He departed without saying a single word of how this was to end: bloodied skirts or a witch burning.

Gardiner's back had not even disappeared behind the small arched door before the women flew at her. Elizabeth almost retched in disgust at the dried blood under their fingernails and the stench of rotting teeth. One bony hand wrenched Elizabeth's wedding ring off her hand. She yelled, cursed, called them filthy peasants. Then, the other jumped on Elizabeth's back, pinning her down, while the other crone produced a pair of scissors. The rusted blades began to slice through blue silk, worn only once this awful day. As the scissors cut through the silver fleur de lis, the tiny seed pearls went flying, hitting the plaster floor like grains of sand. The old women screeched with delight.

"Silver thread! Real silver thread! Look at those pearls, worth a bob or two!"

Having stripped Elizabeth down to her underskirts and stays, her tormentors tutted at all the blood. "Look at this, just look at this," one said to the other. "Disgusting little slut, isn't it?" She chucked the crimson stained petticoats into the roaring fire. Next, she sliced through Elizabeth's stays until all Elizabeth wore was her stained chemise. The room quickly filled with the coppery odor of blood and sweat. Gardiner's midwives shared another look.

"Boil some water, and soak a rag with vinegar," one said.

As the other started to drag Elizabeth toward a cauldron of water that looked just shy of boiling, she started to scream. At first she screamed for Jane. Not Jane the queen, but Jane, her older sister. Her protector. She wailed for Mother of God to have pity on her. Finally, she cried out for Thomas. She called out for Thomas Cromwell like a condemned man calling on Christ. Eventually, the two women overpowered her, forcing her into the scalding hot water. Elizabeth braced her feet against the outside of the large basin, but the vessel was so hot her feet recoiled, giving her demons the opportunity to plunk her into the blistering water. She screamed again, only this time, the scream belonged to an animal. Such a noise could not have come from a woman.

**

Rich kept vigil at the windows overlooking the stableyards, waiting for Cromwell's black robes on the horizon to come and deliver them all from this nightmare. Rich demanded, as Lord Chancellor, to be allowed an audience with either Edward or the queen. Edward coldly rebuffed him on both accounts. In fact, none of the Seymours were anywhere to be seen. At the first hint of a crisis, they appeared to have abandoned Elizabeth and gone into siege mode. Edward's insistence on silence, on locking the queen away, only created a dangerous vacuum in which the most audacious gossips—like Jane Boleyn—were free to spin the most vile stories ever fabricated about a woman who lost a baby. What could Edward be thinking, handing his sister off to Gardiner? Rich could only speculate, and Cromwell would not want speculation; he would want answers. Namely, where was his wife? And was that a woman screaming somewhere deep within the palace?

"Sir Richard, we cannot find the lady!" a clerk ran up behind Rich, breathless from the sprint.

"Well keep looking man! Retrace your steps. A palace can only have so many secret passages. Comb every room. Go down into the catacombs if you have to, but find her!" Rich shouted. He rested his head against the window, noting with despair the fat rain drops hitting the glass. Enough rain and the roads might be bad enough that the messenger would not reach Cromwell tomorrow. Enough rain, enough slow going, and Cromwell might be back the day after tomorrow, at the earliest. Too late to outrun vicious rumor. Once Aske, Darcy, and that maggot, Constable, got wind of this then Brandon's negotiations would be for naught. Why negotiate when one has God on one's side? And, God certainly made it clear whose side He was not on today.

At the sound of hooves clattering below, Rich's heart leapt, only to come crashing to the floor. The rider was only Tom Seymour galloping in to the stableyard. Rich stroked his neat beard. What in God's name was Edward's angle? Did that jackal not see that by maintaining this ridiculous code of silence around Elizabeth, he only shrouded her in dirty suspicion. If Cromwell had been there, he would have treated it matter of fact, a most unfortunate mishap of the kind women are prone to have. Cromwell once told Rich that a wise man shines the candle on his own problems. If Cromwell had stood in that chapel, seen the blood smeared across the marble, he would have calmly helped Elizabeth to her bed and fetched a proper physician. An hour later, maybe a brief statement that his lady wife had miscarried of a child, but not to worry, she was in perfect health and they should all go about their business of hunting and dancing. Thomas Cromwell would strangle Gardiner before ever letting him within a foot of Elizabeth. But Cromwell was not there, and unfortunately, Edward was.

**

"I need to see her, Edward," Jane said. Her brother did not take his eyes off his wine glass.

"She has unmade herself and her husband. You are to go nowhere near Elizabeth," Edward ordered. "Otherwise, the king will think you infected by her. This is Elizabeth's fault. She will shoulder the blame alone. I will not allow that slut to drag the rest of us down."

Jane slammed her goblet down on the heavy table, echoing like cannon fire. "I am the queen of England. You will not speak to me so. I ask to see my sister, and you shall take her to me."

Edward's poise did not falter. "You are married to the king. But you have not been crowned queen. You have not been crowned queen because you are still without child. So if you want to truly be queen, then lift your hems, little sister, from the bloody mess that your Elizabeth leaked all over the chapel. You want a coronation? Then forget about Elizabeth as she leaks out Cromwell's dead baby, pretend like you don't even know her. For certain, when news of this catastrophe hits the Lord Privy Seal, he will run so far, so fast in the opposite direction that I do not doubt he is probably swimming to Ireland as we speak." Edward drained his glass and turned to face Jane, trembling in her quiet rage. He looked her over, from crown to hem. "If you ever want Henry to touch you again, then you will not allow yourself to be seen in the same room as Elizabeth. Lissie, that stupid slut. I told her to get rid of the baby a month ago. Now look what's become of us."

**

Elizabeth lay flat on her back, staring at the ceiling. After the scalding baths, after the violation of having vinegar soaked rags shoved up inside her, and ripped out again, the screaming and sobbing had left her completely void of any feeling. Just an eerie calm and resignation. She bent her ring finger, observing that one of the crone's had stolen her emerald ring. No matter. No one was coming for her. Not her brothers, not Jane. Certainly not her husband. Cromwell once told her that when your house burns down, you run and save your own skin. He reeled away from political disasters the way some men fled the plague.

Locked alone in that stifling, windowless room, Elizabeth scratched at the rough hewn linen shift one of the midwives had thrown at her. Elizabeth had told Gardiner that she was without sin, but that was hardly true, was it? She drank hard, gambled big, and relished the vanity of expensive gowns and the envious stares of other women. She had judged her husband unworthy when God cut her from the same cloth of self-preservation. When Elizabeth discovered Edward's first wife bent over a table, sobbing, while her father humped his daughter in law like randy dog, did Elizabeth cry out, 'for shame'? No. She backed out of the study. Walked right past Jane, not saying a thing, knowing that as soon as the scandal broke, both their marriage prospects would be ruined. So, the only thing Elizabeth said to any one that day was to her father's secretary: she changed her mind and she would love to marry that decaying Northern lord.

And what of Anne Boleyn? Elizabeth and Jane were accessories to the judicial slaughter of Queen Anne. Sweet, virtuous Jane. Jane of English milk and honey, the portrait of virtue? Jane Seymour had been scooting around on a married man's lap when Anne Boleyn threw opening the door, bellowing for all to hear: "What is this? I find you wenching with Mistress Seymour while my belly is doing its business!"

That night, Elizabeth wrapped up Anne's dead, malformed son. Soon after, Elizabeth found herself testifying against an innocent queen. Not long after that, Jane and Elizabeth were having a merry time choosing fabrics for Jane's wedding gown while Anne Boleyn mounted the steps of the scaffold. A miscarried pregnancy at the wrong time, with the wrong husband, and the most glamorous, most audacious queen in Christendom lost her head like she was the most common of criminals.

Elizabeth's stomach knotted with hunger. The women had told her they would fetch her a bit of bread and ale before locking the small door behind them. Hours later, stomach still empty, she salivated at the thought of the feast the rest of court would be sitting down to: capon basted in its own juices, braised ox-tails, delicate custards scented with lavender. If she were sitting down to dine privately with her husband, then the table would be creaking under the weight of delicacies sent to him by his merchant friends, rarities that even Jane would not see on her table: giant, deep sea prawns, pheasant simmered with saffron, finished with truffle shavings.

If her husband were here.

Elizabeth dried her eyes on rough woven linen shift. More like a hair shirt than a chemise. Cromwell would not be charging to her rescue, a dark prince to carry off the fair maiden. If even a whisper of the day's events had reached him, then he was probably bent over a desk, working by the light of a single candle, to draw up the documents annulling their marriage. Truth be told, she did not blame him. She scorned him, lorded her superior birth over him, greeted his attempts to pleasure her with disgust. Now, abandoned in a stuffy chamber, rank with sweat and vinegar, she realized too late how wrong she had been. She'd had a husband who clawed his way to the height of power through sheer talent and daring. Not a pompous dunce like Suffolk, who knew nothing of sacrifice or consequence. She'd had a husband who insisted on satisfying her first before seeing to his own pleasure. Not like whoring Francis Bryan, who shoved Anne Stanhope up against a wall, rammed his member into her, and called it love making. Now, Elizabeth had a life of solitude in a nunnery to look forward to. If she was lucky. She could not begin to contemplate what her fate might be if she were not lucky.

Katherine of Aragon. Anne Boleyn. Now, Elizabeth Seymour. Three different women who miscarried, all of them accused of sin. For all her misdeeds, for all her arrogance and vanity, Elizabeth did not believe for a single moment that any of that caused her to miscarry the child. For once, could a man just accept that some things were in God's hands? Nobody's fault. An act of nature that implicated no sin, no frailty endemic to women. Elizabeth shook her head at the world of men and their hypocrisy. Finally, she shut her eyes to doze; no food would be coming any time soon. Once asleep, she dreamed about the blood of queens and of children gone too soon from their mothers' wombs.

**

Just as the sun filtered through the colored pane of glass, Rich startled awake. Was he dreaming? Or did a black leather riding coat, trailing the sweet smell of mulling spices, sweep past him?

"Thomas?" Rich asked disbelieving. No man could have made it back to London so soon through roads so muddy.

"Where is she?" Cromwell demanded. "I've been in the saddle all afternoon, all night. I rode two horses nearly to their death. Where is she?" Cromwell asked again, numb with either exhaustion or with a dreading recognition of a scene played out before in his life: leaving on business only to come home to a dead wife and children.

Rich ran his hands through his beard, saying nothing. Cromwell dashed to him and shoved Rich against the wall.

"Is she dead? Is my wife dead? Open your bloody mouth and tell me!"

Rich shook his head. "I, I don't know. Thomas, they—Gardiner—took her away. The boys have been up all night, combing the palace for her. Edward Seymour will not see me; he will say nothing, and in that void, the most rank gossip runs wild. Thomas," Rich dropped his voice to a whisper. "The speculation now touches the Seymour family themselves. Everyone remembers that Anne did not deliver herself of a dead prince until she found Jane Seymour on the king's knee."

Cromwell ripped off his muddy jacket and simply tossed it among the rushes. He rubbed his hands through his dark hair. "The stinking fog of gossip just thickens, the closer you get to London, the uglier it gets. A single night past and already fisherman's wives are clucking that the queen's sister is dead, or she is alive but to be burned as a witch, or that she is alive and given birth to a two headed monster on the floor of the church. The Papists dance in the streets; they have their proof that I am the Antichrist and my unholy spawn has been smited by the true word of God. The Reformers are no better, using my wife, my lost child as evidence of the inherent idolatry and wickedness of the old Mass."

Cromwell threw his riding gloves against the colored panes of glass. "Christ, Richie, what kind of superstition, what kind… we may as well be in Spain right now." he buried his stubbled face in his hand. Rich realized this was the first time he had seen Cromwell anything less than perfectly groomed; salt and pepper stubble dotted his face and his closely cropped dark curls were unkempt.

Once in their offices, Rich helped Cromwell shave. As he held Cromwell's dark robes open, he said, "Thomas, you have to clean yourself up, compose yourself. Like you always tell me: never let anyone see you out of sorts. Panic is more contagious than the plague. Once the Seymours see you strutting around Whitehall, implacable, unruffled, they will piss themselves."

Cromwell bit down hard on a cinnamon stick. Would it be the rack for Gardiner? No. Cut out that old squawking seagull's tongue. Then let him try to slander Lissie. Cromwell felt an uncertain tug on his robe. He turned to face a trembling Ralph Sadler.

Cromwell grinded the cinnamon between his teeth, saying nothing. Ralph swallowed hard.

"I sent for the Venetian doctor. I am very sorry sir if I overreached myself. But, it was the only thing I could think to do. If you need him, he's here on the pretext of brewing tisanes for Chapuys."

Cromwell patted Ralph. "No, no Master Sadler. You did well. And now, I must ask you to assist me further."

Rich straightened himself. "What of me? Am I just to pick wild flowers?"

"You stay here and put out the fires. The king is about a six hour ride behind me. When he arrives, keep the focus off Elizabeth. Spin it however you need to, but make sure the king believes that thanks to Gardiner and Seymour, the queen's reputation and legitimacy is now at stake. Send some of our fighting dogs to arrest Gardiner's filthy midwives. Make up whatever charge you need to; we will prove it later. "

Cromwell turned to Ralph. "I need your discretion again."

**

Amazing what a few broken bones here and a few pulled teeth there could accomplish. Where others spent all night searching for Elizabeth, Cromwell and Ralph located her within an hour. Cromwell picked the lock to the door as easily as if he had a key. He signaled for Ralph to remain in the doorway. No windows. No light except for the dying embers of what must have been a roaring fire. In the dim, red glow, Cromwell made out the form of a woman lying on her side on a ratty daybed.

"Elizabeth?"

The form did not move, so he advanced a little further. Soft firelight caught the red-gold in the woman's hair, and Cromwell knew it was his wife. No other woman had hair like that.

"Elizabeth?" he said again. Carefully, he seated himself behind her. He rolled her to face him. She just stared with big, vacant eyes. For a terrible moment, Cromwell feared those harpies had given his wife some sort of potion that addled her wits. He bent and kissed her hairline, tasting sweat where once he tasted lavender on her. He smoothed her hair back. Her eyes, mottled and cloudy as the sea, snapped into focus. The pupils dilated and the grey tones in her eyes gave way to their usual sky blue.

"Thomas?" she whispered. She wrenched her whole body around to face him. "Thomas, I thought you left."

"I left you a note that I would be away, but I came back as soon as I heard." He eased her up to sitting.

"No, I thought you left. I thought you would have left me by now," she said faintly. As if still dubious of his actual presence, she reached up to gently trace the edges of his ears.

"Lissie, I would never leave you. You know I love you," he took her hands in his, kissing each knuckle.

Elizabeth shook her head. "Didn't you hear?" her voice deepened and sharpened with resentment. "Didn't you hear that your house burned down while you were gone? I assumed you did all you could to save your own skin. So, where do I rank? I mean am I as disastrous as the Boleyns, or only slightly less catastrophic than Wolsey? Maybe just an inconvenience, like Thomas More?"

He reached around her small shoulders, drawing her into him. "Shhh. Lissie, don't talk like that. We need to get you out of here. Let's get you back to our room, into a bath." He tried to weave his arms under her knees to pick her up, but she pushed him away. Instead, she swung her legs around and stood up right on uncertain feet. She hugged her elbows, shaking.

"All sailors lost at sea, but I wager you manage to cling to the last piece of wreckage and save yourself." Elizabeth started to pace, still clasping her arms around her body.

"Lissie, you are not well, you are not thinking clearly."

She rounded on him. "I see things perfectly clear. I see that you do as you will, use people as it suits you, overturn the world to remake it to your liking. But, when things go wrong, you are never there, Thomas. It's never you that has to pay the price. You trample through people's lives, people's worlds, but you never have to pay." She started to convulse with sobs.

"Elizabeth, stop this. Stop distressing yourself, you are not making sense," Cromwell said firmly. He moved towards her, but she shied away.

"You plunder houses of God, but I am the one who has to stay behind and pay the tithe. I am the one they point to as a witch. I am the one that they plunge into boiling water. You left me here! Trouble came knocking, and you managed to be absent. But not me. They got to me. Got a hold of me, held me down while women with black rotting teeth shoved rags soaked in vinegar up inside me, only to rip them out again. Spat in my face, called me a whore, a filthy slut for leaking blood all over the place." She walked in circles, faster and faster. "Oh, God!" she wailed. A fresh trickle of blood dripped down over her ankles. She pushed her knees together and sank to the floor. Elizabeth keened back and forth, crying over and over again: "Look at me, just look at me. Ruined. Completely ruined."

Cromwell edged towards her, palms open and exposed. The same way he might move towards a wounded enemy soldier. He shrugged out of his robes. Kneeling beside her, he wrapped the dark velvet around her. She pulled him towards her with one hand while slapping at his face with the other. He managed to wrap both his arms around her, pressing her tightly to him. Immediately, the fight left her, and she slumped against him.

"Dove, we need to get you out of here. Let's get you into our bed. Clean sheets. Your satin nightgown." He kissed her cheek and gathered her into his arms. A pale girl, just skin and bones, wrapped like a Twelfth Night gift in Cromwell's rich velvet.

Cromwell led the way, while Ralph followed closely, illuminating the secret passages with the light of a single candle. Elizabeth rested her chin on her husband's shoulder. She peered at Ralph with haunted eyes, recognizing the sweet face that once brought her crimson pouch brimming with diamonds.

"No necklace this time?" she asked Ralph, attempting a smile.

"No, not this time," Ralph admitted sadly.

"Master Sadler, I can manage things from here. But, do you think you could find your way back to this point." Cromwell shifted Elizabeth in his arms.

Ralph nodded eagerly. "Yes, sir. Absolutely."

"Good. I need you to get the Venetian. For God's sake, don't bring him through my public rooms, but bring him round to this door. It will take you right into my bedchamber, but I will leave it unlatched. Be swift about it, but not in such a haste that people think to ask you why you are in such a hurry. And tell the doctor I will pay him anything."

Once in their chamber, Cromwell settled Elizabeth on the bed. She pulled his robes tightly around her, curling her knees into her chest.

"I'm calling for your bath, while we wait for the physician." He propped a pillow under her head. Unexpectedly, she reached out and grabbed his wrist.

"Please, Thomas. No doctor. Please. I have been violated enough."

He poured a cup of water and pressed it to her lips. "Dove, you need to trust me, please. He is not like Gardiner's harpies. He may be the only real doctor in England."

She nodded, resigned. Sitting upright, she said, "Thomas, please know that I did nothing. Whatever they may accuse me of, I did nothing to bring this on, or cause it."

He refilled her cup. "I know it. I know you are not to blame. None of this was your fault. Do not let anyone make you think otherwise."

Cromwell offered to help her into her bath, but she refused. "I'm, I'm still bleeding," she said softly. " Let me manage this for myself."

Elizabeth did not linger in the tub. While he sent for her maids, she quickly dunked her head long enough to rinse the sweat out of her hair. She had neither the motivation nor the energy to properly wash it. Alice came in with the other girls, bearing warmed drying sheets, gauze to wrap between her legs, and her black satin nightgown. For once, the girls showed a bit of decorum and courteously averted their eyes. Without making a bigger production than necessary, one of the maids picked up Elizabeth's red stained shift and chucked it in the fire. As Elizabeth stood up on shaky legs, Alice dried her, clucking with sympathy.

"My poor lady. Does it hurt very much?" Alice murmured.

"Only when I breathe," Elizabeth replied numbly. She squeezed her eyes shut as two of the other maids wrapped her thighs with the gauze. Alice pulled the black satin nightgown over Elizabeth as soon as she could. Elizabeth stumbled back to bed, refolding herself into Cromwell's robe of state. She inhaled the familiar smell of cloves and other spices. She burrowed her head into the plush velvet and wished she could sleep for a year. Rightly figuring that their lady needed to be left alone with her husband, the girls solemnly filed out. They had complained amongst themselves and to their fathers that the Lord Privy Seal's young wife was a spoiled brat. Spoiled rich girl or not, she did not deserve this.

Elizabeth drank another cup of water and devoured the entire bowl of fruit sitting by her bedside. She dozed until she felt Cromwell's lips on hers. Her eyes fluttered open.

"Thomas, they took my wedding ring, my necklace…I think Anne has my necklace," she said.

He patted her knee. "Let me worry about that. Lissie, I have the doctor with me. He just needs to make sure that you will be all right. He does not speak English, but he does speak French."

Elizabeth looked past Cromwell to see a young man standing by the fire place, hands clasped and eyes filled with sympathy.

"Where did you find him?" she asked wryly.

"Somewhere between Venice and Constantinople. Anyway, he knows your French is….well limited. But he will keep it simple." Cromwell waved the doctor forward. "Dove, trust him and trust me."

The young doctor smiled and rubbed his palms together quickly to warm them. He felt around her jaw bone and under her arms. Satisfied there was no infection that had spread through her body, he motioned to her abdomen.

"May I?"

Sighing, Elizabeth nodded and laid back. What was one more humiliation at this point? He tapped and pushed into her flesh, pausing every so often to ask if something hurt. But nothing hurt. She'd been emptied of all pain, all feeling. He lifted her hem past her knee, briefly looked between her legs, and then pulled the sheets back over her. He shrugged, as if this were all perfectly common place to him.

"Still bleeding?" he asked her.

"A little."

"More than yesterday? Less than yesterday?"

"Less."

He nodded and smiled. "Good, that's a good sign."

At that point, Cromwell said something sharp in Italian, but the doctor's calm never faltered. He turned to face her husband, completely unimpressed with Cromwell's ruthless reputation.

"How can you nod, smile, say that's a good thing?" Cromwell hissed in Italian.

"I do not mean to be indifferent. This sort of thing happens in nature. Your wife will be fine. As long as the bleeding trails off, then not to worry. In this case, as so many others, the English cures were worse than the ailment. But, no infection, no signs of scarring. She just needs to rest and eat and heal her soul. Another six weeks, and you can try to conceive again." He turned to Elizabeth and slipped back into French. "You are going to be fine. You are a healthy woman. You will have more babies." He patted her elbow. She brightened at the idea that she was a normal, healthy young woman, and not some ungodly aberration.

But, Cromwell's face darkened. His thoughts drifted to his little angles, Grace and Anne, buried next to their mother in one of the mass graves dug out at the height of the sweating sickness. A priest had patted him on the shoulder, telling him, "Dry your eyes Master Cromwell. You will remarry, and more babies will follow." Eight years later and he'd finally remarried. Eight years later, and the same line: more babies will follow. As if that could make up for the little ones already lost.

After he paid the doctor, Cromwell scribbled a note to Rich, telling him to control the damage the best he could, but that they would not be able to properly deal with Edward or Gardiner without the king. The fun could begin tomorrow. Oh, and issue a statement that the queen's sister had a faultless mishap and lost the child she carried. But, not to worry because she was in good health and spirits, resting easily now. And she would not want everyone to worry on her account, but instead to enjoy themselves hunting and dancing.

Gently, Cromwell disentangled his velvet robe from Elizabeth, who had balled herself around the plush fabric. He crawled into bed beside her, replacing Cromwell the coat with Cromwell the man. For the first time in their marriage, Elizabeth sought out his touch, his embrace. Clinging to him she said again in quiet disbelief: "You came back for me. You came back for me."


	11. Chapter 11

Robert Aske thought about what a difference a day could make. Reconvened with Lord Darcy and John Constable in Pontefract Castle, he rested his forehead against the fireplace mantel. The sun had set on one day, the day Lord Suffolk had him convinced of the futility of his pilgrimage. Now, the same sun rose on a new day, and a new world. At last the full depth of Cromwell's heresy and depravity was laid bare for all of England to see. But a day too late. Aske had already negotiated in good faith with the Duke of Suffolk that the pilgrims would disperse. Aske lived his life by the word of God and by the trust that people put in his own words. Too late to wheel around, trot after Charles Brandon, tell him: "Why your Grace, on second thought, we reconsider the strength of our position. God has spoken, Lord Cromwell has polluted the throne, and our crusade shall continue southward."

Only a day after Aske shook hands with the Duke of Suffolk himself, a rider came tearing up the road from London with epic news: the queen's sister had miscarried Cromwell's child in spectacular fashion. During pious Bishop Gardiner's mass, a holy celebration of the old ways, good trumped evil; Cromwell's unholy union with the Seymours ended in a bloody mess on a chapel floor. The messenger offered up his own explanations, gleaned from tavern maids and farmers he met along the road from London: the Lord Privy Seal's sweet, virtuous, golden wife must have been forced to commit unnatural acts with her heretical husband. Or, Elizabeth Seymour's body, recognizing the sin dwelling within, forced out Cromwell's low-born seed with the force of Mary, Our Blessed Mother. But then, the queen's sister could not be wholly blameless, could she? A woman lies down with dogs, she should not complain of the fleas—or, so the messenger whispered to Aske.

John slammed his pewter goblet onto the great oak table. "That bastard. That devil. The serpent and his whore. Robert, how could you have doubted the perversity that goes on in London for a moment?" he yelled at Aske. Heretofore, John had been on non-speaking terms with Aske for the ride back to Pontefract. John vigorously argued that Aske sold them all short, even before the news of Elizabeth Seymour's happy accident crossed the River Don.

"Ah, Johnny, you are speaking to me again," Aske managed pleasantly enough. John drained his wine and gestured wildly with the empty goblet.

"Damn it, Robert! Is it not plain enough to you? We have no obligation to keep our pledge, keep our fidelity to Suffolk. Not after the righteousness of our cause--and the wickedness of the mission of that sect of heretics--has been written in blood!" John raged. Wielding the goblet in one hand, and pointing at Aske with the other, he shouted: " And don't you start with me, don't start with me about Elizabeth Seymour. You think she is the same, cute little kitten that asked you to look over her Latin. She is no child anymore! She is a grown woman and apparently a trained whore at that! The queen's sister has spread herself wide open, taking in Cromwell's heresy and his prick!"

"Stop it Johnny!" Aske said forcefully, but quietly. "Stop your foul lies! Makes you no better than Cromwell or Cranmer. You rage against the injustice done to religious houses all you want, but you leave Lissie Seymour out of this. She is one of the queen's body. You impugn her, you may as well impeach the queen." Aske rubbed at the emblem of their uprising—the five wounds of Christ—sewn over his heart.

"I tell you all in open day: fuck Cromwell's harlot and fuck the queen!" John shouted loud enough for the South to hear. All of the men gasped at such blatant sedition—all except Lord Darcy who had seen too much to by shocked by anything less than the Second Coming . "Those bloody Seymours have done nothing except twiddle their thumbs while we fight for our lives. Just one whore of a queen replacing another!"

Aske crossed the room in a single stride, despite his short stature. He grabbed John by the neck. "We are loyal subjects! We do not slander! We do not abuse the king's consort with foul language. We preserve their Majesties—and their kinswomen."

John shook himself loose of Aske's grasp. Not very difficult considering Robert Aske was a man of logic and words, not fists and blood. John stood up, almost brushing noses with Aske as he did so. He flung the stool that he'd been sitting on out of the way. Stomping out of Darcy's main hall, John called over his shoulder: "They are serpents, one and all, that sect in London. And by God will they offer you the fruit of all of our undoing!"

Darcy sighed, and reached over to pull the stool right side up. He gestured that Aske should sit there. The lord poured Aske a mug of ale, which the tired lawyer accepted gratefully. Darcy sank into his large chair and nestled his beard against the fur trimmings of his robes.

"Don't listen to that kind of piss and vinegar," he told Aske. "You have made a promise with our Lord Suffolk. By keeping that promise, you strengthen our cause, not weaken it. After all, what is a man, but his promise?"

**

Thomas Cromwell never made a promise he did not intend to keep. Even when he went back on his word, flip-flopped like an acrobat, or did the very opposite of what he'd solemnly swore he would not do, he still thought of himself as an honest man. For he only reneged on agreements, on oaths, that he had no intention of ever really maintaining. Borrow money from him, and Cromwell would never try to manipulate the interest, no matter what the exchange rates did. But solicit a political favor from him, some sort of assurance from the omniscient Cromwell that all would go according to plan? Well then, one had best be a gambling man in that circumstance.

Safely nested in their marriage bed of cotton sheets and goose down pillows, Elizabeth held him tight. "Promise me, promise me you will be back," she whispered against his chest.

"Lissie, I told you, I will be back to check up on you, every hour upon the hour." He gingerly removed her arms that encircled him. Only a week ago, he had fantasized that she would cleave to him with as great a force as he needed her. Cromwell had never imagined that the reality would come at so high a price. He propped another pillow behind her head.

"Thomas, please do not leave me alone. What if they come for me again?" Elizabeth begged. His heart stung at the sight of her fragility. If it came to pass that Gardiner's assault had robbed her of her spirit, then by God, Cromwell swore, he would impale the bishop on a dull shard of glass.

He leaned his forehead against hers. "You are safe here, little dove. I promise you. But, I have to go set things to right. I'll send your maids in to sit with you, so you won't be alone."

She hesitated. "Swear you will come back?"

He clasped both her hands in his. "I swear it." She wove her small hands around his thumbs and gave them one last squeeze before reluctantly letting go.

After he dressed himself and patiently sat through a proper shave from his barber, Cromwell went to rally his troops. He found Elizabeth's four maids—Alice, Joan, Cate, and Helen—waiting for him in his receiving chamber. Those four were no less his foot soldiers because they wore dresses. As the eldest one at eighteen—and full of entitlement--Alice had bossed her way into being somewhat in charge. Cromwell's attention to organization appreciated that Alice had the other three girls aligned next to her in descending order of age. And, in Alice's world, descending order of importance.

"There is to be no discussion, no questions of what happened to your lady over the past two days," he told them. They nodded sycophantically with their hands clasped demurely behind them. He wondered if their fingers were crossed. "Suffice it to say, the visual depictions contained in the pamphlets being distributed around the city are not to be believed."

In unison, the girls stared down at the hems of their gowns, blushing furiously. He knew at once they had all seen the pamphlets—and probably discussed the lewd images at length with each other, with their families, with the boatman that ferried them back and forth from the palace every day. All of London, all of the kingdom was dissecting the tragedy with dark, obsessive fascination. No doubt it was the traitors in the North, like Aske, who had to put a filthy spin on it. Cromwell would have to swallow the insult and smile. Again.

Determined to march his camp out of the bog they now found themselves in, Cromwell pressed forward. "So," he continued. "Keep it light. Play cards, talk filth about Anne Stanhope-- whatever your lady wants. Maybe show her those trinkets I told you to bring. Novelty is good. Novelty is distracting." Before the dawn had broken through night, Cromwell had sent messages to Elizabeth's maids: gather up whatever strange, fascinating articles your fathers have picked up on their travels and bring them with you. The girls patted their pockets to show him they'd remembered.

"Now, go on, all of you," he finished. "Think of this as a day of rest. You all need only sit there. And, God willing, Joan, Cate, and Helen, my wife will have finally learned your names." As they scuttled off in a flurry of silk and taffeta, he wondered which of the maids his Anne or Grace might most resemble had it pleased fate to let them live. Grace used to like to shove her younger sister, Anne, around. So, perhaps somewhere, there was a Grace who looked like a dark-haired Alice.

Once at his desk, the first thing Cromwell did was to flip over the hour glass that always sat there. The same glass that had measured the hours of Anne Boleyn's labors, and the hours in which Henry hovered between life and death after his jousting accident. He rubbed at his temples, rehearsing how to play this out for Henry. For Henry to take action, it needed to be about Henry. Otherwise, he would just rage that his low-born minister was far too high-handed with nobles like Edward Seymour, or esteemed clergymen like Bishop Gardiner. Some part of the mess needed to assault Henry's vanity. But Henry needed to blame Seymour or Gardiner—and not slap Cromwell upside the head.

Rich's heavy steps clomped to his desk. He tossed down one of the pamphlets in front of Cromwell, who did not bother to open his eyes or stop rubbing his temples.

"Rich, I have already seen them. I do not need my memory refreshed."

Rich helped himself to a chair and a cup of ale. "The Latin captions are misspelled, and the conjugations, reflexive pronouns…all to the jakes."

"Well then it must be those Northern buggers."

Rich, unsure if he was allowed to laugh or not, smiled behind his cup. Getting down to business, he asked, "Where is the king? I thought he was half a day's ride behind you."

"Making his way through Sussex. So many pretty girls there, so little time. You know how the story unfolds, Rich." Cromwell kept his eyes shut. He wondered if he could massage out of his brain the crude ink images of his wife, legs split, giving birth to a serpent. Which a priest tried to douse with Holy Water. "It's that God damn printing press."

"Yes. Double edged sword, fickle mistress," Rich agreed.

Cromwell's eyes snapped open. No blue in them today, Rich noted. So, whatever scheme that just came to his master, it was sure to be as dark as his eyes. Usually, Cromwell's black eyes just calculated and maneuvered, seeking paths of least resistance without malice or personal grudge. Sometimes people, ideas just got in the way, that was all. However, something in those eyes today unsettled Rich: a yearning for vengeance, a recklessness borne out of lust for a juicy young wife. A taste for blood.

"All the pity that the king does not give a groat about the queen's sister," Cromwell said softly. Then, barely above a whisper, he added: "But, then it's always another matter when it's your own wife."

Under his gold chains, Rich began to sweat. His master had lost his senses. Rich drained his cup and said nothing. In the cheapest parts of his mind, he half wanted to see how this would all unfold, see if Cromwell could deliver on the political strike that would fall somewhere in between the groin and outright treason. Cromwell stood and walked out from behind his desk. Wherever he was going, Rich did not want to follow.

"Where are you going?" he asked cautiously.

Cromwell straightened the gold chain around his neck. "I'm calling in a favor, or making a threat. Could go either way."

**

Edward spread a map of England out on the table. His fingers traced the earldoms, the dukedoms—although that was getting a little ahead of himself. What about Wiltshire? The earldom had been vacant ever since Thomas Boleyn lost his titles while his children lost their heads. Edward nodded to himself. Wolf Hall was in Wiltshire. Come to think of it, why hadn't the king bestowed the title and lands on him before? He grit his teeth. Probably because of Cromwell. Probably because the blacksmith's son (Elizabeth had narrowed her husband's paternity down to either blacksmith or brewer) had greasy designs on the earldom for himself.

Behind him, checkers clicked against the board as his wife and brother played one another. Tom said something to make Anne laugh; Anne thought that a man's ability to make a woman laugh was a very great thing. So, little brother, he thought. Are you going to plow Anne after Francis Bryan is through? Careful what kind of harvest you reap from her, though. Probably has the pox after Francis has had her. Edward certainly had no desire to touch her and run that risk.

Anne's voice hummed away, sweet and toxic. "I was so sickened by all of it. Bathed twice that night. Threw up, all over me. Like an infant with a touch of colic. I tell you this, Tom: that dress is ruined. Ruined. And, I shall never see a schilling for it. Edward, perhaps you could ask Cromwell when he gets back."

No response.

Anne raised her volume. "Edward? Edward are you listening to me? See, Tom, this is the problem: he never, never listens to me."

Because you have nothing to say, Edward thought. But out loud, he repeated the last thing she'd said: "The dress? Ruined? Ask Cromwell for a schilling?"

Satisfied, Anne returned to her game. "It's only fair. I know she was your sister, but now she's his wife—and she ruined my gown."

Tom stacked a few checkers, one on top of each other. "Oh, Edward, he's back."

Edward whirled around. "_Who_ is back?"

Tom's pert eyes glanced up. "Cromwell. Cromwell is returned from the coast."

"How, how do you know this?" Edward stammered.

Tom clinked the checkers together as though they were dice. "I saw him this morning. Not to worry. He was not angry. He was merry—as merry as he can be. Smiled and told me: 'Good morning, Master Seymour. Your sister is well.'"

Edward steadied himself against the table. "He…was merry?"

"Hmmm…more pleased than merry. You know that look he gets? Satisfied as a house cat. Like he's had just a bite too much at supper, but it was so good, that it was no matter."

"He said Lissie is well? Meaning she is in his care, not in Gardiner's custody?"

"Well," Tom considered. "If he finds her well, then I would assume she is with him. For if she were not, he would probably be writing up his own divorce."

**

Elizabeth regretted every cross word, every impatient huff she'd ever directed at her maids. The girls did not know it, but the steady hum of their chatter was the only thing keeping her sane while she tossed and turned, waiting for Cromwell's hourly visit. Three hours in a row, and thus far he'd kept his promise. But, Elizabeth reminded herself, there were many hours in a day.

She pulled back the bed curtain a bit. The girls probably thought she was still asleep because they'd kicked their heels off and draped their legs sideways over the chairs as they played at cent, but mostly gossiped. Who was getting married. Who should be getting married. Those who got married but turned fat after the fourth baby. The harmless women's talk made her less jumpy, reassuring her with the conversation's own banality. She pulled the sheet off of her and stepped out.

Alice was just pantomiming to the other girls how large one of their old friends had become after multiple babies when Joan stopped laughing long enough to notice Elizabeth standing there in her satin nightgown and bare feet. Alice gave a little gasp, and she dropped her arms to her sides.

"Begging your pardon, my lady. We didn't wake you, did we?" she asked sheepishly. The three younger girls scrambled out of their chairs and thrust their feet into their shoes with as much dignity as possible.

"I could not sleep anyhow. " Elizabeth curled her exposed toes over one another. "Could you send for my bath? I need another one. I cannot get the smell of vinegar off my hair."

Joan pulled out a chair. "You could play a hand or two with us, while we wait for them bring in the tub and warm the water." She added a curtsey at the end for good measure.

"What game are you playing?" Elizabeth asked cautiously. No sense in being coy when those girls had seen her naked as the day she was born. When they had wrapped linen between her legs like a nappy. But for that very reason, Elizabeth could barely look any of them in the eye.

Joan pulled the chair out a little farther, as if she might just bring the chair to Elizabeth and let the older woman be a spectator to the game. "We are playing cent, my lady. No money at stake. You could deal the next hand," she offered again.

"You could play with Joan and me. Cate and Helen can prepare your bath," Alice added, much to the younger girls' chagrin. Cate. Helen. Elizabeth made a mental check of their names. The smallest one stepped forward.

"What about lemon and mint? I mean to get the vinegar smell out. If that does not work, we can try rosemary with lavender. Or rosewater."

Elizabeth merely nodded. She took a seat and shuffled the cards, slapping them against one another, while the smell of lemon ground with mint filled the room. She dealt the cards to Alice and Joan. They played hands, lost and won, all in complete silence. Apart from the sweep of cards across the table, the only sound was the huffing and puffing of Cate and Helen as they moved furniture to make room for the tub in front of the fireplace.

Elizabeth broke the silence first. "Is it true pamphlets are going around the city?"

Alice and Joan buried their faces into their cards, making a study of concentrating very hard on the hand they'd been dealt. Cate picked up the mortar and pestle again, grinding lemon peel and mint leaves together. Only little Helen braved an answer.

"It's true," she said meekly. Then she smiled. "But we will have you on your feet tomorrow, looking as pretty as your wedding day. And everyone will forget the slander. Instead they sigh about how your hair is copper and gold at the same time. How blue your eyes are."

Elizabeth shook her head. She put down her cards. Resting her elbows on the table, she covered her face with her hands. "Oh, God. How can I face them all again? How can I face Bishop Gardiner? My brothers? The king? I cannot. Not when I am the most polluted woman in Christendom."

Alice patted her forearm. Awkwardly, but sincerely. "You are still beautiful, my lady. In spite of everything. You are still beautiful."

Elizabeth rested her hands under her chin. "I know it. I just don't believe it."

Alice's kept her hand on her lady's forearm. "Perhaps we will make a believer out of you by tomorrow. Bathe you. Wash your hair so it sparkles again." Alice thought for a moment. " You do not see your husband running the opposite direction. And my lady, your husband's opinion is no small thing in London." Alice removed her hand and fished around in her pocket. She produced a small medallion, unadorned, uncolored. Just two equal halves of black and white that twisted and folded, on top of one another. Alice handed it to Elizabeth for closer inspection.

"I have never seen anything like this. Is it a pagan symbol of some sort?" Elizabeth held it up close, as if she could unravel the seeming simplicity.

"Before my father married my mother, he traveled east on the silk routes. Far past Constantinople. Past India. All the way to the mountains that are so high they jut into Heaven, and you cannot see their peeks—"

"Alice, I highly doubt a mountain could—" Joan interrupted.

"Joan, is this your story or mine? Exactly as I thought. So, my father brought back all sorts of fantastical objects, but sometimes in the evening, I find him turning this little thing over and over in his hand. He says it is to remind us nothing is black and white. See," Alice pointed out something Elizabeth had missed: at opposite ends of the white and black halves, a small dot of the opposite color looked perfectly at home. Perfectly balanced. "See?" Alice continued. "My father says that there is a little bit of the opposite in each."

"Not so simple, then," Elizabeth concluded. She thought about Cromwell wrapping her up in his robes, holding her close to him, while she tried to slap him for leaving her. For better or worse, the man running to her bedside every hour on the hour--bringing her flowers and sugared plums—was the same man that only months earlier had ruled over her with terror and threats. In a dark room, a dark man had slammed her face down on a desk. Now, his blue eyes sparkled when he kissed her awake and pressed a rosebud into her palm. Elizabeth supposed that she would have to accept both men as one in the same. The thought still troubled her, though.

Alice watched Elizabeth go from contemplative to melancholy. "Your bath is almost ready," she told Elizabeth, hoping to break the slide into sadness, or wherever her lady's thoughts took her. "We can help you out of your….well out of your things."

Elizabeth stood and outstretched her arms, so Joan could pull the nightgown over her head while Alice delicately unwrapped the linen between her legs. Elizabeth scrunched her eyes shut so she would not have to look at the bloodied strips.

"How bad is it?" she asked.

"Not bad. Less and less blood every time we change the linen," Alice reassured her.

"You see my lady," Joan added, determinedly bright. "You are on the mend."

Elizabeth let them help her into the tub. The younger girls added the lemon and mint that had been steeping in a bucket of hot water. Joan ladled the water, sharp with citrus, over Elizabeth's head. She sat in the tepid water and winced where her skin bore the welts of the scalding bath that Gardiner's nurses had plunged her into. As she sank up to her chin in the sweet, crisp smelling water, Elizabeth pulled apart the dark and the light that made up her husband. His fearsome intellect that marched bravely onward, daring to foment a new order of things, daring to believe in a better future for England. The ruthlessness of that same intellect left in its wake dead queens and fallen friends. Even at Thomas Cromwell's best, and at his most frightening, Elizabeth only now realized that in either event, he remained stubbornly human. She just hoped that Alice's talisman was right, and maybe Cromwell's own blackness was tempered by equal parts of goodness.

**

"My Lord Beauchamp, the king will see you now." The page, still in his own riding garb, handed Edward the king's seal. Just in case the authority of Edward's summons was in dispute. He swatted the page away, grasping for a few moments to compose himself. His head swum with ideas, theories of how to state his case—none of them good. He'd underestimated Cromwell's conviction as both a politician and a husband. Time to pay the piper. Edward started to leave, throwing his doublet over his shoulder, but stopped.

The necklace.

That stupid, gaudy thing--worth a prince's ransom—that started the whole bloody business with Cromwell. At the time, Edward did not see much choice: Cromwell wanted Elizabeth. Cromwell always came away with what he wanted. Better to give it to him so he would not have to take it from you. And, Edward had genuinely believed that Elizabeth was the only plausible anti-reformist agent in Cromwell's little fiefdom. All she needed to do sew a little sedition during the day, and lay flat on her back at night. Edward knew she would cry, complain, maybe hate her brother. But, he just assumed her dislike of Cromwell would prompt Elizabeth to feed Edward a wealth of information to spite her husband. Instead, she clamped shut like an oyster, withdrawing from even Tom and Jane. In her fear of Cromwell, nothing and no one could pry Elizabeth open. This all assumed Cromwell ever told her anything worth repeating. A schemer like that would never reveal his card trick, not even to his wife. Especially not his wife. In these beginning days of autumn, Edward could not imagine what he had been thinking on those heady spring nights of plotting and maneuvering.

Before facing the stink and rage of the king, Edward rifled through Anne's jewelry chest. He pulled out magnificent choker. He could not resist holding the gems up to the dying sunlight. The pendant was the size of a robin's egg and glowed soft yellow fire from within. What in God's name did Anne think she was doing, tangling a treasure like this, amidst her baubles? Before this pendant ever rested between his sister's tits, he did not doubt that it probably graced the turban of an Indian maharajah. He folded the priceless, sparkling necklace into a silk kerchief and placed it in his jacket. No doubt that spindly toad, Cromwell, would be at the king's right hand for Edward Seymour's royal rebuke. Best that it was Edward who returned the necklace, rather than wait for Cromwell to kick in Anne's door.

A groom of the privy chamber announced Edward. Henry sat at the far end of the long table, sweating anger. Edward realized how serious things were if the king came straight from his horse to sit in his privy chamber; the vain king, always wanting to appear ready for a Holbein portrait, still wore his riding leathers. Of course, the king's right hand man sat literally at the right hand of the king. A study in contrasts: Cromwell was flawlessly shaved without a hint of a cut, and his dark curls tamed against his skull. He scribbled away, the scratch of his quill grating against Edward's ears as the point rode across the paper. Apparently Cromwell felt it necessary to take minutes of Edward's humilitation. As Edward approached, he could smell horses and rainwater attached to Henry. Edward swept his king a bow worthy of Arthur and the Knights of the Roundtable. When he was bent at the waist, Henry cracked his riding crop at his face, hitting Edward's ear.

"You fool!" roared Henry. He heaved himself up and circled Edward. "I leave my kingdom in your hands. And this is the service I get from my queen's brother? You think yourself worthy to be called uncle to my son? Well? Answer me!"

"Your majesty, I—" Edward fought against the urge to rub his throbbing ear. Cromwell never reached up with his own hands where Henry had just struck him. Edward would follow suit.

"You are a knave, a fool, incompetent—Master Cromwell, are you getting this all down?"

Cromwell merely nodded, his faced screwed up in clerical determination to get the insults on record as fast as they came out of the king's mouth.

"God help us all," Henry continued. "God help us if one day I die, and you are left as my son's Lord Protector. Just look at the mess you have allowed." Henry held up a pamphlet, clenched so tightly in his fist that his fingers went white. "What did you think you were doing? Hiding in your ivory tower while your sister is slandered so viciously."

"God knows those traitorous villains have dragged Elizabeth's name and virtue through the mud. And I expect to punish them accordingly when I have the chance," Edward assured Henry.

"Elizabeth? Elizabeth is not the bloody point! Look what has been done to the queen." Henry shoved the pamphlet into Edward's chest. The king's face reddened, moistening with sweat. "This is what greeted me upon my return to London. These things are crawling all over this city like ants."

Edward unfolded the crushed paper. Smoothing it out, his mouth fell wide open. Expecting to see Elizabeth birthing a two headed serpent, instead he saw the image had been altered to depict the queen in the foreground, enveloped in the arms of Cromwell and Cranmer, while a snake slithered up the queen's skirt. Meanwhile in the background, Elizabeth continued to expel a serpent infant as priests threw holy water on her.

"I, I, I had no idea that—" Edward stammered. He dared to look at Cromwell, who met his gaze with supreme confidence and a smile itching to come out.

"My Lord Beauchamp, you had no idea? I cannot decide if that makes you blind or incompetent. You should be on your knees, thanking your brother-in-law here-"

Both Edward and Cromwell winced at the characterization of any sort of familiarity.

"Yes, thanking Lord Cromwell," Henry continued. "For attacking these vicious rumors and destroying these foul images. Viscount Beauchamp, I am banishing you from court!"

A protest began and died on Edward's lips. Again he stole a glance at Cromwell. The dark head simply nodded along as he scribbled furiously.

"Master Cromwell will draw up the edict right here. You are to be gone from court within the hour. You will return at my pleasure," Henry said calmly, having satiated himself with his own anger.

"Your majesty, if I may?" Cromwell interjected sweetly. Henry nodded his assent. "Perhaps, in a time of unholy rebellion, it would be best if the royal family—including the queen's members—maintained a front of unity. We could of course suspend Lord Beauchamp from the privy council for a period of time…" Cromwell took on a quizzical front, as if he had only just now considered this.

Edward tried to weigh which was the greater humiliation: banishment from court, or banishment from court only to be rescued by that oily fox, Cromwell. Who Edward would now have to show deference to for rescuing him. Brilliant, Edward thought. Bloody brilliant. Cromwell created an alibi for himself by interceding on Edward's behalf; no one would accuse the Lord Privy Seal of prospering too much from the slander of the Catholic queen. Cromwell also got the benefit of watching Edward's royal flagellation, while at the same time keeping him at court—where Cromwell's greasy spies could keep an eye on the queen's brother.

"Master Cromwell, again your wise counsel is appreciated. It shall please our majesty that Viscount Beauchamp be excluded from privy council meetings until I see otherwise. You may go." Henry gestured to the door with his riding crop. "Oh, and Edward. I do pray that when the queen is brought to childbed, that you secure better nursing for her than you did for your other sister.

Edward pulled the necklace from his jacket. Now was as good of time as any to return it to Cromwell. "My Lord Privy Seal," Edward purred. "My wife took this into her safe keeping. See that it gets back to Elizabeth. I know she must be missing it."

Cromwell said nothing, but extended a white palm, his scholarly fingers closing over the gems.

**

On his way out from the king's chambers, Cromwell sailed through the mob of petitioners waiving letters, shouting his name. Pay a gratuity and take a number, Cromwell thought. Out of the corner of his eye, he spotted Rich glowering over Bishop Gardiner. Rich left Gardiner pale as milk and trembling. He bounded over to Cromwell and fell in step with his master.

"I have good news," Rich told Cromwell as the two men walked briskly back to their offices.

"I could use some. The king will not move definitively against Gardiner. Although, he did tell Gardiner I am to be Vice Regent of Spiritual Affairs. Something of a consolation prize, I suppose." Cromwell shook his head and lengthened his stride. He'd wanted Gardiner's neck stretched out in the gallows, or that round belly sizzling as the bishop burned alive at the stake.

"I have good news _and _I have a present," Rich beamed. "Pick a hand."

"Oh, Richard. You know I am greedy. I choose both hands."

Rich stopped and held his palm open flat to reveal Elizabeth's magnificent emerald ring. Immediately, Cromwell snatched it into his own hands. He turned the ring over and over, holding it to the light just to be sure of its veracity.

"Your friend from your Florentine banking days? Frescobaldi's man here in London, Genovisi? Well, he came bearing gifts while you were with the king. Turns out one of those hags tried to sell your lady's ring to a jeweler. She told the jeweler she found the ring lying in the gutter. Of course, a stone this big is no secret as to who it belongs to here in London. The jeweler convinces her the gem is worth a third of its real value, buys it off the stupid crone—but not before taking down her name and place of dwelling. Anyway, the jeweler then turns it over to Genovisi. Your banker friend knew the ring on sight, reimbursed the jeweler, and brought the ring straight to me. And now," Rich concluded triumphantly, "I return it to you."

Cromwell smiled. Merchants, bankers, and traders looked after their own. Not like the damn backstabbing nobility sitting at the king's council. He would make sure that the jeweler received subsequent commissions for new gems for Elizabeth. He also made a note of sending a box of saffron, cinnamon, and other spices to Genovisi. In addition to compensating him for his expenses in rescuing Elizabeth's wedding ring. But, Cromwell returned to the most important matter at hand.

"So, we know who those villainous harpies were? We can find them and arrest them?"

Rich grinned. "Yes, when you saw me, I was just telling our dear Gardiner that his nursemaids had been arrested for theft from a noble and that we would likely add an additional charge of assault upon a noble. I told him that his midwives were in the Tower, pilloried until those bony hags were just skeletons."

"Small comfort," Cromwell sighed. "For my wife. For myself." Lissie will never be the same, he thought sadly. They nearly broke my Lissie, and no punishment can change that. "Richard, I leave it to you to draw up the charges. I need to see to my wife."

Rich caught his elbow. "Thomas," he said softly. "Elizabeth cannot hide forever. I know you want to protect her, shield her from all the questioning stares. But the longer she is out of the court's eye, the worse for her. The gossip will not die down until everyone sees her back in the queen's service. Healthy and radiant."

Cromwell's thick lashes brushed against his cheek bones. "She is back on her feet. But, Richie, I cannot bring myself to send her back out into the den of vipers that is the English court."

"Then you will end up damaging her just as much as Edward." Rich walked on, leaving Cromwell slumped against the wall.

He rubbed his hands over his face, wiping away the pain etched into his sharp features. He made an about face and decided to cut through the gardens on his way to see Elizabeth. He twisted off a white rose blossom and tossed a few schillings to the gardener—just in case Cromwell had unwittingly destroyed some sort symmetry, some sort of ridiculousness. Such as there must be equal red roses to white roses. And here he thought the War of the Roses was over.

Cromwell met little Helen as she carried a tray out of the bed chamber. He motioned for her to stop for a moment. He lifted the lid on the tray: an empty plate beneath.

Helen met his eyes. "She practically ate an entire chicken. Drank three glasses of wine. She's fast asleep now. I think my lady is on the mend. We shall put some meat back on her bones soon enough."

He waved her on. "Just make sure she does not eat so much, so fast that she sickens herself."

Cromwell found the other three girls bailing water out of the tub, pouring it into buckets that other, lower servants would haul out. Alice spotted him and snapped at the other girls. They trailed after her, still lined up in order of age, and curtsied to him as they left. He waited until he heard the door latch behind him before he sat on the bed.

Elizabeth frowned a bit in her sleep. Or maybe the dream perplexed her. Selfishly, he wanted to kiss her awake and lay down with her, curling his body around hers. Instead, he kissed her lightly enough not to wake her, but she stirred slightly, registering the presence. He watched her chest rise and fall as she slept on her side, arms wrapped her pillow. Her coppery hair, still damp from her bath, was plaited neatly, and the braid fell over her shoulder. Cromwell could not resist reaching out and tracing her lashline with the pad of his finger. Her full lips pursed into a pout and she licked them. A sleeping princess out of legend, he thought. No wonder the dark knights in those stories always wanted to spirit the princess away to a distant castle. Keep her for his own and share her with no one. Carefully, he edged her fingers open enough so that he could press the emerald ring and the rose into her hand. Her small fist closed.

Sighing, Cromwell stood and took leave of his sleeping princess. Rich was right: she needed to be up and around. Back in the queen's rooms tomorrow. He could only imagine the rumor mill that Jane Boleyn was feeding to the other ladies in waiting. Still, his chest ached with the knowledge that he would have to release her to the world tomorrow. Share her. Watch her smile and dance with the very dogs that had whispered witchcraft and lechery behind her back. At least for today, though, he could still be her one and only.

Back at his desk, Cromwell flipped the hour glass over again. A ruckus brewed in one of the antechambers, but he chose to ignore it and focused on the latest bill for Parliament. The storm neared, yelling and knocking furniture over; Cromwell buried his face in a treatise he used to cross-reference the bill's terms. Finally, the chaos personified in the form of Edward Seymour stomping through his clerks' protests.

"Get out!" Edward barked. "All of you! Get out! I will speak with Lord Cromwell alone!"

His clerks and secretaries did not twitch a muscle. Edward whirled around, shocked at not being obeyed.

"All of you, did you not hear me! A lord has told you to get out!" Edward shouted.

Cromwell tapped the excess ink off his quill. Without looking up, he said: "Master Sadler, why don't you and the other gentlemen go make a nuisance of yourselves in the kitchens and get yourself some meat pies. Bring me back something as well; I have not eaten all day." Like sycophants, a sea of black coats rose at the same time and exited.

Once the last of the footsteps padded out, Edward started in: "Well, Cromwell, just what sort of game do you think you are playing?"

The only sound in the room was the scratch of Cromwell's quill and Edward's ragged breathing.

"Cromwell!"

"My lord, I am very busy. But I am not deaf. I heard you the first time." Cromwell's eyes remained stubbornly on the work before them. He finished a sentence. There. He leaned back in his chair and gave Edward the privilege of his attention.

Edward smirked. "You should be thanking me, you know."

"Thank you, my lord?" Cromwell deliberately misunderstood him. "Ah, yes. Thank you for returning a necklace to me that was already mine. Your wife is to be commended for such quick fingers."

"If it were not for my miscalculation, Lissie would still be gritting her teeth on her revulsion of you. Christ, if you could only have seen the look that used to cross her face when she knew she had to go to your bed. Convenient for you, wasn't it? I mean, everyone forsakes her. Except you. You got to ride in here like some black knight and rescue her. For which, I do not doubt, she now cleaves to you." Edward folded his arms across his jewel encrusted chest. "Face it Cromwell: Lissie dripping your dead baby all over the chapel floor was probably the best thing that has happened to you. But, how does that make you feel? She only loves you by default, now that everyone else bolted from her."

Cromwell pressed the tips of his fingers together. He cocked his head, but remained silent.

Edward stifled a laugh. "My God, man. Open your eyes. Or, do you honestly believe Lissie fell in love with you when you came back for her. Because nothing could make you loveable, Cromwell. Just wait. Give it a month. Once her friends come back around, throw the queen and Tom back into the equation, and do you really believe you will still be her savior? Throw all the jewels, all the gowns you want at her. Like I said, nothing could make you loveable. You've known Lissie since May. I have known her since birth. She's headstrong, fickle, and spoilt. Watch her every day and you will watch a little more of her love drain away."

"Edward," Cromwell breathed.

"What?"

"Are you finished? I am assuming you have been composing that for the last hour. I assume that was the best you could do, yes? So, if that is your best then run along. Because if you are going to come at me, you need more than that. Otherwise, you waste my precious time." Cromwell pulled his dagger out of his vest. He took one of the pears sitting on his desk. Expertly, he set to peeling it so that the peel came off in one single spiral.

"But, Edward," he went on. "I tell you this much. If you ever allow Lissie to come to harm again, I will kill you. I won't bother to draw up charges, waste money on an axeman. I will do it myself. One night you will turn around, and I will be there. I will slit you from your pathetic balls, all the way up to that ridiculous moustache. So that you can watch all your guts spill out in front of you." Cromwell cored the fruit and divided it into sections. He offered one to Edward.

Edward numbly shook his head.

"Could you please answer, so I know that you understand me?" Cromwell asked pleasantly.

"Yes. Yes, I think I understand you perfectly well." He inclined in a slight bow and turned to leave.

"Oh, Edward. One more thing: once the queen births a son, who do you think the king will name as Lord Protector in his will—just in case the unspeakable happens? Me or you?"

**

Suffolk thought about the difference a single day could make. Another day of negotiations and the news of Elizabeth Seymour's sinful miscarriage would have hit. And the Duke of Suffolk would have been left standing with an ill equipped, inadequately numbered regimen, surrounded by thirty thousand angry rebels who had just received confirmation of the justness of their cause. Written in a woman's blood, by God Himself. Charles Brandon's horse negotiated the long, muddy road back to London. He did not mind the slow pace. The road provided a welcome limbo, in between the man he thought he was when his king sent his oldest friend at the head of a ragged army…and now the man that Charles would have to explain to his wife, Catherine. As long as his horse loped slowly on, Charles did not have to meet Catherine's open, honest face and tell her he made promises he knew he could not keep.

But, she already knew he had trouble keeping his promises.

Still, she would look in his eyes, take his face in her tiny hands, and _she would know_. Catherine would know Charles had seen things, done things, using the royal banner to justify their monstrosity. Charles told the rebels to send emissaries to meet with the king, and spell out their grievances personally. Secretly, Charles was relieved when he learned that Aske would not be going, and instead would send John Constable and Ralph Erlecker in his place. Charles told Aske he would be safe, but the duke did not believe what he was saying for a moment. Aske told him that he did not fear his own king, rather, Aske doubted some of the king's councilors. The councilors without noble blood. Councilors named Thomas Cromwell. Charles wanted to tell Aske that he was quite right to suspect the deviousness of the Lord Cromwell. Tell the gentle lawyer that Cromwell's promises did not amount to even the paper they were written on.

But, no doubt such an exchange would find its way into one of Cromwell's damn reports. And Charles would find himself called before the Lord Privy Seal. Cromwell and his reports.

The Earl of Shrewsberry cantered up to him, kicking up mud.

"So it is certain, Constable and Erlecker are to appear before the king?" he asked.

"I have not heard otherwise from the king." Or from Cromwell, Charles thought but did not say. He did not want to have to admit to Shrewsberry that Charles Brandon, Duke of Suffolk, took orders from a drunk blacksmith's son.

"Wicked business brewed in London while we were away, eh?" Shrewsberry pulled one of the ubiquitous crude pamphlets from his breastplate. "God only knows what would have become of us had the rebels learned of the unfortunate accident sooner."

"Yes, God only knows." Charles just stared on ahead. In his mind, he added Lissie Seymour to his growing list of "Lives Destroyed by Thomas Cromwell."

"I mean, perversity of these rebels…"

"Yes, my lord: the drawings were illustrative."

"For decency's sake, could they not have left the queen out of it?"

Charles hesitated. "What's this?"

Shrewsberry passed over the damp paper. "You have not seen the latest? Shows the queen…embraced by Cromwell and Cranmer. Oh, and that squiggly thing is a snake sliding up the queen's skirts."

"The king has seen this?"

"I would assume so, your grace." Shrewsberry did not seem troubled. "Can only imagine what the king will have in store for these villains after what their devious propaganda has done to the queen's virtue. To say nothing of Cromwell's own wife."

Charles shifted in his saddle. It just did not add up. Why attack the queen? Her Papist sympathies were an open secret. Henry complained that Jane did not know her place, was always preaching mercy for the rebels.

"Let us hope I catch Cromwell in a favorable mood. I have half a mind to purchase the leases of some of the suppressed abbeys. Lovely buildings, good land…"

Charles looked at him, not understanding.

"The suppressed abbeys? Cromwell is selling the leases? Did you not know? Of course, you have to pay him handsomely for the privilege for his mere consideration of your name. Nobles, low men. Anyone with the ready cash is snapping up the leases."

Charles sucked in his breath. All the distress that the suppression of religious houses caused…and now Cromwell mortgaged sacred buildings as if they were farmhouses? Charles tutted to himself at his surprise. Nothing Cromwell does should surprise you, Charles chided himself. Yet, surely the king would balk at the shamelessness of Cromwell's latest scheme?

"Surely the king cannot condone the profiteering off the backs of religious houses?" Charles insisted.

"The king loves to hunt. Watch the joust. Feast and dance. He lets the other king run the kingdom. Does not ask questions. If the king does not say no, then who would deny the other king his will?"

Charles reined his horse to a halt. "Wait. What did you just say?" he demanded. "What do you mean _the other king_."

Nonplussed, Shrewsberry replied, "The other king? Did you not know? That is what people have taken to calling Cromwell: The Other King." Shrewsberry dropped his voice to a murmur. "Well, he somewhat is, isn't he? Wolsey never had the kind of power that Cromwell has taken into his own hands." Shrewsberry rode on, leaving Charles stunned.

_The Other King?_

Charles threw back his chain mail hood, sending a small river of rainwater cascading down his back. He shook violently, but not from the cold.


	12. Chapter 12

Edward took his non-exile/exile with quiet grace and a stiff upper lip. Men, who only a few days before oozed up to him to beg his favor, now skid to a halt when they saw his blonde head coming across the gallery. Reduced to background scenery, without a dozen courtiers tugging at his sleeves like almoners, Edward found a quiet with which his thoughts and plans could finally coalesce. Even Anne did not want to be in the same room as her husband, which suited him just fine. Without whispered intrigue and polite sedition orbiting wherever he went, Edward found his own voice in the void created. In the stillness, in the vacuum created by his censure, only Edward Seymour existed. Not Edward the brother, the husband, the courtier. Just Edward and the singular destiny he could carve for himself that did not depend on Cromwell or the king; these days it was difficult to tell where Cromwell's power ended and that of the king's began. Of course he depended upon Jane to give Henry a son, but once that happened, Edward knew he could dispose of the lot of them: Cromwell, Suffolk, Gardiner.

No invitations to dine meant no long nights with deep glasses of wine. So he awoke before dawn. Up in time to meander the empty palace. Empty of courtiers, but not of servants. Standing on the rampart overlooking the great hall, Edward sipped a cup of small ale and watched the usually invisible servants prepare Whitehall for another day. They'd lowered the chandeliers and were replacing each of the hundreds of spent candles when a flash of copper below caught Edward's eye. He walked to the opposite side to get a better view.

So, Elizabeth had emerged from her cocoon in Cromwell's kingdom within Whitehall. Edward scrutinized her the best he could from where he stood. Looking directly below, his depth perception could not make out the girth of her figure, if she had put any flesh back on her small frame, or if she had taken on her husband's bony appearance. But even from this angle, there was no denying the glorious dress she wore: a brilliant moss green with an underskirt heavily embroidered with gold. Edward whistled to himself. Lissie, that will take some bravura to pull off today, he thought. She abruptly stopped, halfway through the great hall, then she turned and fled back from the direction she'd come. No debut today? He wanted to jeer her, shout that even whales had to come up for air eventually.

Several minutes later, his sister's red-gold head bobbed through the hall. Edward leaned as far over the railing as he dared. What's this, he thought. Lissie, are you on to your second costume change already? This time, she wore a brazen azure dress that reminded Edward of a peacock. No telling where the blue ended and the green began. But, Elizabeth got even less far this time. She did not even clear a third of the hall before she halted. She ran her hands up and down the gold bodice. Her head dropped and she turned around, fleeing hostile territory. Edward clapped a hand over his mouth to keep from laughing out loud. I think I like being invisible, he thought. Scorned men with no friends had nothing but time on their hands. So, Edward decided to remain, finish his ale, and see if Elizabeth would make a third attempt.

Three times a charm. By the time Elizabeth made her third attempt to reenter society, the servants were hoisting the chandeliers up. Perhaps the miscarriage had smacked some of the audacity out of his sister, because now she wore a subdued, enigmatic fabric that was by turns purple, grey, and even a little green. She crossed the hall with a little more confidence, even a sway of the hips with no man around to see. Edward watched, fascinated as the gown changed colors depending on the angle of light that fell on the fabric. He raised his cup in mock salute; his horse made it across the finish line. A minute later, Edward realized he celebrated too soon.

Coming back across the hall, Edward made out Cromwell's dark head and signature black robes. From this angle, Edward would have hoped to see at least a little of Cromwell's hair thinning or graying. No such luck: still raven black, thick, and stubbornly curly. Cromwell gripped Elizabeth's elbow in a vice-like hold, hauling her and whispering sharply like a headmaster. Elizabeth tried to get in front of Cromwell, but he just pulled her firmly to him and marched her back. Once the dark and copper head disappeared, Edward released the laugh he'd been holding in the entire time. He wondered how much he had missed, always jostling for position, trying to be closest to the king. The best seats, it seemed, were behind everyone else. The best vantage point turned out to be that of a servant's. No wonder Cromwell spent years lurking around in the background, biding his time, and learning everyone's secrets.

Edward waited, as any rapt audience must, for some sort of resolution to the story he now felt himself a part of. Fortunately, he did not have to wait long. Several minutes later, the dark prince was back, towing his ivory bride across the great hall. Elizabeth returned in the green dress she wore the first time around. Apparently, the papacy was not the only thing in dispute in the Cromwell household; he even had to make his wife's wardrobe contentious. Edward quickly crossed to the other side of the rampart so he could make out their expressions. Cromwell leaned his head against Elizabeth's, squeezing her shoulders, but his face was firm, resolute. Elizabeth slumped some of her weight against him. One hand clenched his robes, while the other wiped away a few tears. Her husband murmured against her temple, and she nodded along.

**

"Lissie, you cannot look as if you are hiding or trying to absorb into the background. You must appear as if nothing has changed," Cromwell tried to explain to her. "You never wore anything subdued before. If you come out wearing that grey dress then everyone will think you have lost your nerve."

Elizabeth tried to shake his hand loose from her arm, but he held fast, determined to see her to the queen's rooms himself--rather than risk another unanticipated costume change. She could scarcely keep up with Cromwell's long stride: her small feet clicked along, two paces to his one. Fidgeting with the velvet trimming of her sleeves, she wondered if she could will this dress to turn the color of water.

"But Thomas," she pleaded. "I have lost my nerve. Everyone saw those pamphlets of me, of the queen. Everything has changed. And that dress was not grey. You just caught it in the wrong light."

"Well, steel yourself, dove," Cromwell said, not unsympathetically. "I've given instructions to the Master of Revels. You are taking the lead part in the masque tonight. You will take the lead part in whatever festivities are planned for when those damned traitors come before the king."

"I cannot do it. I cannot dance around and sing in front of everyone. Not when I know they've called me a witch, a whore," Elizabeth protested. Cromwell grabbed both her arms and turned her to face him.

"Listen," he said bluntly. "The scent of blood is in the air. Show even a moment of uncertainty or weakness, then anyone who has ever begrudged the Seymours or me will take us down." He turned and offered her his arm. Begrudgingly, she linked her arm through his and pulling at the soft embroidered wool of his black robe, she leaned into him. He placed his lips against her temple. "Besides," he continued. "Think of it as a service to the court of King Henry VIII. You know that Jane Boleyn will snap up the lead parts if they do not go to you, and I am sure most men would rather see you dancing and singing."

Elizabeth nodded. Jane Boleyn made no secret her resentment towards Elizabeth; as the second most senior lady in waiting, Jane Boleyn thought she was entitled to more than an unofficial acknowledgement of her contributions as the real chief of the queen's ladies.

"If Jane Boleyn wants my position, then she may have it," Elizabeth declared. "There's substance to her grudge; while I was sick with child, she ran the queen's rooms. God only knows the bitterness she's been nursing these past few days."

"She can rail against you all she likes. But you are sister to the queen and my wife. That means you cannot play understudy to anyone except the queen." Cromwell stopped at the threshold of the gallery that led to the queen's rooms. "Lissie, this is as far as I go. You will go in there. You will attend the queen. And you will be at the forefront of the revels." He disengaged his arm from hers and gestured towards the imposing double doors that separated the queen's rooms from other public galleries.

Elizabeth played with the emerald wedding ring. With the weight that she'd lost, the ring slid easily off the proper finger. Elizabeth jammed the ring onto her index finger. "Will it not make you jealous? Sending me off to dance and sing for other men?" she asked sweetly. Cromwell stared at their shoes, clasping his hands. He drew in a ragged breath but would not answer. She shrugged and rocked to her tip-toes, kissing him deeply on his neck. His pulse quickened underneath her lips. Satisfied, she turned around and disappeared behind the doors that separated his world from hers.

Once the doors shut behind her, Elizabeth leaned back against them. With her hands still on the door knobs, she surveyed the scene in front of her: lesser maids bustled around with kindling and buckets of water. They had too much to complete before Jane started her day to take any real notice of Elizabeth. Tentatively, she stepped away from her quick escape and advanced towards Jane's privy chamber. If she had fortune's smile and the wind at her back, then Jane and her ladies would be at matins, and Elizabeth would not have to confront them for another hour.

"It's you. You're back."

Elizabeth twitched. Perhaps it was better this way, bear her brazen face in Jane's rooms first thing in the morning, and grudge to Lady Rochford. She straightened her shoulders, puffed out her bust, and turned around to face the voice that addressed her. Ursula stood with stack of clean linen in her arms. Her narrow features knotted with concern and shock.

"You, you're back, Lissie. I did not know if I would see you again," Ursula said. She stepped forward, closing the gap between her and Elizabeth.

"I was told I could not hide for forever. You understand that I at least wanted to try," Elizabeth admitted. Her cheeks burned with the memory of calling Ursula a whore that day they all rode at to visit the Lady Mary. "Ursula…I said some things to you that I did not mean."

Ursula shifted the bundle in her arms. "Lissie, you always say what you mean, and mean what you say. When you called me a whore that day at Hatfield, it was because you meant it." Her thin face tried to arrange itself into a smile, but failed miserably. "At any rate, you need not trouble yourself about that day. I think I am a slut, too."

"Well, I have accumulated quite a reputation to live down these past few days."

"Serpent births and witchcraft. And Jane Boleyn says you just idle away your time."

A smile broke through on Elizabeth's face. "She probably salivated over those pamphlets. Tell me the truth, Ursula: what kind of tales did she spread?"

"She ruminated over what sort of unnatural acts you must have committed in order to cause such a miscarriage. In compiling her list, I think she invented some things that you and I would never even dream of. "

"And you and I are no innocents in the world," Elizabeth said. She shook her hair and Jane Boleyn's malice out of her mind. She reached out to Ursula, arms open. "I can take those linens in to her Majesty," she offered shyly. No Treaty of Universal Peace, but it was at least a start.

Ursula hugged them to her. "Oh, no, Lissie. You do not need to see to such small things."

"Really, Ursula. It is no bother." She held her arms open expectantly. "I'll take them in."

Ursula's thin lips frowned, but she passed over the linens, releasing the burden standing between them. She placed her hand on Elizabeth's forearm and squeezed it. "Lissie, I am sorry for all of this. The king, your sister. Now, your miscarriage. I am sorry for it all. We were friends once. Maybe too much has changed for that to be so again, but I have missed you. For what it is worth, I have missed you. Not just these past days, but the past months."

Elizabeth rested her chin on top of the sheets. She swallowed a round of tears back inside of her. Her fingers grazed Ursula's. "And I have missed you. I've had some time to think, think about all those who I have judged too harshly."

Ursula took her hand back. "I don't suppose Lord Cromwell made it on to your list of pardons?"

"Well, he has his moments. He loves the best he knows how." Elizabeth did not want to concede any more. She could not bring herself to admit to Ursula how she'd hugged herself to Cromwell, shivering like a wet dog and begging him to stay with her. Mostly, Elizabeth refused to face the ultimate, logical question: did she love him? Did she love him as an idea, or love him as a deeply complicated and troubled reality?

"So, is the queen up?" Elizabeth asked a practical question to snap her and Ursula back into the here and now.

"Alone, at her prie dieu. As far as I know. I think Lady Rochford is skulking around here somewhere, moaning to everyone that you took the lead part in the masque tonight."

Elizabeth rolled her eyes. "I would have traded the main part to her for a little respite from her backhanded compliments. But, half the country is in revolt, my brother has been royally shamed, and the dance shall go on. I did not get dressed up this morning for it to come to nothing."

Ursula smiled. "Well, God keep you, little Lissie, through today. Rochford has been foaming at the bit, ready to break her teeth on you."

Elizabeth slowly twisted the knob to her sister's most private chamber and pushed the door open cautiously. In the corner, Jane knelt, mumbling in prayer. The bare, pink pads of her feet crossed over one another like angel wings. Elizabeth just stared at the golden river of her sister's hair, flowing down her back. She could not decide if she wanted to braid Jane's hair or yank it out of her scalp.

Decisively, Elizabeth tossed the linen on top of Jane's unmade bed. Cloth landed upon cloth with a surprising thud. The spell was broken , and Jane's head whipped around. Elizabeth stood, grounded to the Persian rug. Jane squinted her eyes as if staring into the sun.

"Why did you not help me?" Elizabeth asked flatly.

"Lissie. You're all right. I feared…" Jane unfolded her feet and stood upright.

"Why didn't you help me?" Elizabeth repeated. This time, indignation crept into her voice.

"It happened so fast." Jane crossed the room and embraced her younger sister. Elizabeth's arms remained glued to her sides. "It happened so fast. Edward practically threw me over his shoulder, trying to drag me away. He told me that Bishop Gardiner had you in his care. That you would be well cared for." Jane shook her head. "It happened so fast," she whispered.

" 'It happened so fast?'" Elizabeth mimicked. "It happened so fast? I languished for an entire day. An entire night. No food. No water. Gardiner's version of 'care' was two crones who slapped me, told me what a piece of filth I was. They shoved me into a tub of scalding water; I still have the welts."

"Lissie, please!" Jane cried. "I tried, I wanted to help. But Edward would not tell me where you were. Even if I did know, he would not let me see you."

Elizabeth paced back and forth, torn between throwing open the doors and storming off back to her own rooms and fighting it out with Jane. "You, you _tried_?" Elizabeth burst out. "You _wanted _to help, but Edward would not _let you_? Jane, you are the queen of England for Christ's sake!" she shouted, quaking with righteous anger. "I called out to you. Not just in the chapel. But, when they locked me up like an animal, shoved vinegar rags up inside me, I called out for you. And you tell me that _Edward would not let you help_? You are the bloody queen of England!"

"Lissie, stop it!" Jane flowed back across the room in her white nightgown, like a fleeting ghost. "Edward said—"

"You are the queen," Elizabeth reiterated between clenched teeth. "He serves you." Jane hugged her arms around her. Elizabeth knew she had her sister shamed, but she could not let it be. "Is this how it is to end: 'Oh, Edward, may I please order a new gown? Oh, Edward, may I please have another glass of wine? Oh, Edward, may I use the piss pot?'"

"That is enough, Lissie," Jane said firmly. "That is enough. Keep that vulgar language at the dockside where it belongs. You would do well to remember whose room you are in, whose service you are in, since you seem so intent on reminding me that I am queen."

Elizabeth cinched her hands into fists. They retreated up into her green velvet sleeves. "I needed you. I waited for you. No Seymour came to my aid. Everyone fled from me as if I were the plague incarnate. I am your sister, but I had to wait for Thomas Cromwell to come galloping across England and rescue me."

Jane sighed heavily. Her shoulders heaved up and down with her exasperation. "Lissie, do you want a screaming argument? Is that what you came here for?"

"I don't know why I am here. Maybe I do need a screaming match." Elizabeth sank on to Jane's bed. "But I yelled and screamed until I had no more voice. So, I have nothing left."

Jane sat beside her. She threaded her hands through Elizabeth's. Sighing, Elizabeth placed her other hand over Jane's. Her sister sealed the pact by resting her remaining hand on Elizabeth's thin, cold digits. Jane tilted her head against the strawberry blonde braid pinned on top of Elizabeth's head.

"We can sit here and sling at one another every little thing we have done to fail one another. Would that make you feel better?" Jane asked, clear in what answer she expected.

"If there is something you have been gritting your teeth on, now is as good of time as any to unburden yourself."

Jane tugged hard on Elizabeth's earlobe. "That's for not telling me that Father was helping himself to Edward's wife!" She tugged again, harder. Elizabeth yelped. "That's for saving your own marriage prospects before mine!"

"How long have you been wearing that crown of thorns?" Elizabeth asked, rubbing at her throbbing ear.

"About seven years. Now, Lissie, may we please welcome a new day? The Master of Revels wants an audience with us to compose a masque for tonight." Jane stood and moved towards the sunlight filtering through the colored glass panes. She picked up a brush from her vanity and held its silver handle towards Elizabeth. "And, Lissie, I cannot say that you would have done any different standing where I stood. Think if Lord Cromwell told you that you were not to see me under any circumstances; you and me, we are not free to choose, no matter what we tell ourselves. I am not ashamed to accept it, instead of beating my wings against the bars."

Elizabeth hauled herself up from the bed. She pulled a stool into the sun so Jane could sit in the warm morning light while Elizabeth brushed her hair. "If anyone told me I could not see you, I would still find a way," she insisted passionately, stubbornly.

"Then you have no idea how much you have to lose." Jane stared ahead.

**

Late morning found Cromwell making his way up the boat-launch outside Cranmer's London house. Rich had heard that Cranmer was unmanned at the thought of 30,000 rebels mustering, ready to kill him. Allegedly, Cranmer had plans to conduct some business in Europe that would keep him out of England indefinitely. Instead of bouncing polite, cryptic letters back and forth like a tennis ball, Cromwell decided to take to the river and find out for himself.

Cromwell left the gravel path that would lead straight to the grand house so that he could go directly to the servant's courtyard. Laundry day. A forest of white, damp sheets sprung up in the courtyard to dry in the waning autumn sun. He followed the sound of slapping water punctuated by a German accent. He pushed past a bed linen to find Cranmer's wife squatting before a bucket, violently scrubbing away. As the incognito wife of the Archbishop of Canterbury, Cromwell could not imagine why Gerte had not given herself a promotion up from laundress. His reflection stared up at her from soapy water in the bucket. She gathered herself together, shoving a few strands of blonde hair under her cap, and shaking her skirt out.

"Why Gerte, never has an archbishop had such a dedicated laundress. He must sleep on the cleanest sheets in England." Cromwell bowed politely. Gerte liked to make a pretense of disliking Cromwell and admonishing him whenever she could, but she only did so out of genuine fondness.

She waved dismissively at his pleasantries. "Master Cromwell, you and me, we don't care if we get our hands a little dirty, a little rough, _ja_? It's everyone else around us who thinks they are too good to do the things that need to be done." Gerte glanced around. "Did you bring it?"

Cromwell reached in through his robes and pulled out a small book from his vest. He handed it to Gerte, who quickly shoved it into her apron.

"That book has seen better days, but it is a long road between London and Nuremburg."

"Well, your Reformation has seen better days," Gerte quipped while she stole a peek through the worn pages of the latest heresy hot off the presses from the heartland of Luther. Satisfied, she hid the forbidden book back in her apron. "Master Cromwell, don't tell me that pretty Catholic wife of yours has you second guessing-"

"I have every faith that the king will see the enterprise through," Cromwell said firmly. He knew Rich and Cranmer doubted Henry's inclination to reform.

"How Catholic is your wife?"

"I did not know there was a gradation, Gerte. She likes her saints, likes her Ave Maria. She would like Catholics and Reformers to hold hands and live and let live. But I doubt she has strong feelings about the papacy: she's Catholic out of habit. She prays her rosary in Latin out of habit."

"You do not think she sympathizes with the Yorkshire rebels, not even a little?"

"Apart from a childhood fondness for Robert Aske that I cannot break her of, I do not think she is sentimental after the slander those villains put her through."

Gerte stared at the cobblestones and nudged the bucket with her foot. "I was very sorry to hear of your loss. My husband did not even know she was pregnant." Intelligent and perceptive as ever, she added: "Of course what a pity the queen had to be dragged into the war of the pamphlets. What devious mind could contrive of such a thing? Could only have been a man of a base and low birth."

Cromwell smiled a bland, ignorant smile.

Gerte rolled her eyes. "_Ach_. You men and your politics are like women squabbling in a harem. Except your fights end with a man and an axe. Anyway, how is the North? My husband wants to keep some of our gold abroad. He keeps me busy, sewing diamonds and coins into quilts."

"Well then, I should send my wife over to keep company with you. The North is quiet, placated by the charms of Charles Brandon. But I am not going to stop shipping my mattresses, pillows, and quilts to Antwerp for safe keeping." Cromwell leaned in. "Is it true your husband wants to leave England?" he asked softly.

Gerte's eyes welled up. "I cannot stand it anymore: everything is so uncertain. I want to leave. I want to leave while I still can. I want to take my babies back to Germany, where I know I will not be burned at the stake if I am caught with a book that some fat bishop like Gardiner decides he does not like."

Cromwell patted her arm. "I did not mean to upset you. But when the Archbishop of Canterbury looks like a horse about to bolt for the hills, you understand it becomes my business? At any rate, I have detained you long enough. Where is your husband?"

"Master Cromwell, I am sorry you wasted a trip. He's not here. He is with his other woman." Gerte kicked at the bucket, sending water sloshing over both of their shoes.

"God help us. Not again."

"Yes. Again. The third time this week. _Ach_! Sometimes I think he loves her more than he loves me!"

"Gerte, I am fairly certain that is not the case."

She whistled between her teeth. "I think that you are all in love with her."

Cromwell left Gerte with her laundry and her German book. He told his boatman to go to the Tower. The boatman shrugged, as if to say, is that the only place you ever go? Instead of passing under Traitor's Gate, like he usually did when he made his interrogations, Cromwell used the entrance for state occasions. Like coronations and weddings.

"Sir," the boatman asked tentatively. Cromwell looked up, distracted from a swirl of memories. "Sir, is it more a palace or a prison?"

Cromwell flipped the man a silver coin. "Sometimes I wonder that myself. A little hard to tell them apart at the best of times and the worst of times. I shouldn't be long, so don't row off for a pint of ale."

He hopped out of the boat and made his way quickly to the Tower's chapel, St. Peter ad Vincula. As Cromwell walked across the Tower Green, he pulled his furs around him just a little tighter, chilled by ghosts, haunted by memories. The still of the chapel was broken by a small crash and a muffled sob. Cranmer sat on the tiled floor, clutching a wine skin. Cromwell ran to him, forcing him to standing.

"What are you doing?" Cromwell hissed. "Have some dignity, man. You are the Archbishop of Canterbury for the love of God!"

Cranmer hiccupped—whether from wine or crying, Cromwell could not be sure. "I'm drunk. I'm sorry. I spilled my wine," he said glumly.

"Then it is a fortunate thing bishops wear purple instead of white." Cromwell snatched the wine out of Cranmer's hands. "What, did you steal away with the altar wine? And people say I exaggerate the abuses of the clergy." Cromwell sighed. "Master Cranmer, what are you doing here?"

Cranmer stared distantly. He sniffed. "She's here, Thomas. She's here. You did not see her die. But, after the Calais swordsman took that brilliant head off, the maids on the scaffold were left to wrap her body, her head…" Cranmer grabbed a hold of Cromwell's face, forcing Cromwell to look at him. "A crowned queen, decapitated? Her maids had to carry the bloody shroud here…must have been seventy yards. Yes, about seventy yards. I've walked it, measured it. They brought her here to be buried. But, but I don't know where. You could find out where they placed her, Thomas? Couldn't you?" Cranmer's eyes grew big and mild with suffering. Cromwell reached up and wrenched Cranmer's hands away from his face; Cromwell did not feel like staring into Cranmer's honest, pained face.

"Go home. Go home to Gerte. You should not be here. God forbid anyone has heard you blabber half of what you told me."

Cranmer gave another anguished cry. "Why did she have to die, Cromwell? Why? We could have sent her to France, to an abbey?"

Cromwell rubbed his eyes. Small use in trying to explain to Cranmer that Anne had to die so that Cromwell could save his own head. Even tucked away in a French abbey, Cromwell did not doubt for a moment that Anne Boleyn would find a way to kill him by poison, or assassin. Just look at Bishop Fisher: the Boleyns nearly killed the bishop with a poison laced soup before Cromwell had the chance to sign Fisher's warrant of execution.

Cranmer sniffed again. "You were not there. Why were you not there? You owed her that much. She died like a queen. She was…magnificent in those last moments." He turned away from Cromwell, and darted back and forth. "Perhaps she is buried here? Or here?"

Actually, she is about two feet to my left, Cromwell thought. But he dared not tell Cranmer and risk the sensitive archbishop erecting some sort of shrine, a monument to his lost queen.

"Gerte is worried about you. Go home to her. My boatman is waiting outside. I can take you back-"

"We had the most brilliant, beautiful woman I have ever met, sitting on the throne of England. Fearless in her opinions and her reading. We would have no Reformation without her. But what do we have now, Thomas?" Cranmer raised his voice.

"Master Cranmer, you are not well-"

"What do we have, Thomas?" Cranmer shouted. "We have an uprising in the North bent on killing us and a Catholic queen on the throne _who can barely read and write_!" Cranmer collapsed into a heap of sobs. "You could have let her live! You could have let her live!"

**

It nearly took a royal command for Jane Boleyn to surrender her dreams of the lead part in that night's mask.

"Do not trouble yourself, Lady Rochford. It is only for form's sake that Lissie take the part. Think of what people would say, they would say that the queen is snubbing her sister on purpose," Jane tried to reassure Rochford.

Elizabeth glanced up from her sewing. "Lady Rochford, you narrow your eyes anymore at me, then I fear those thin slits will disappear into your head."

"Oh, your Majesty," Rochford said sweetly. "I was only thinking of Lissie's health…she must be so weakened by her tribulations. Certainly so weak she could not attend your Majesty."

Elizabeth snorted with unlady-like laughter.

The Master of Revels, John Farnley, sat in a corner. "Ladies?" he called out as if to remind them that he was still there. "Ladies, now that we have agreed that her Majesty's sister will serve the lead part, can we please turn back to choosing a subject?"

"Whatever we choose, we must conduct our performance with virtue and modesty," Jane said. Then she added a little sharply: "This is not France."

With her eyes trained on Elizabeth, Rochford cooed to Jane, "Perhaps your Majesty, we could perform an allegory, with Lissie as the Maiden of Spring."

Jane nodded, but Elizabeth held her breath. She could only guess where Rochford would go with this.

"Yes, Lissie can be Spring. Then as in the myth, she is abducted by the dark lord of death, ushering in the barren autumn and winter."

"Lady Rochford, perhaps something a little lighter, not involving abduction and dark lords?" Jane said politely.

"I do not see why we cannot just have the usual siege of the castle, throw some rose petals, the damsels are rescued…" Farnley desperately wanted to keep things simple.

Rochford sat up, animated. "We can do an Irish tale. Lissie you can be Deidre, sent to marry the king of Ulster, but in love with a handsome warrior. Who is then killed by one of the king's men."

Elizabeth rolled her eyes. "Lady Rochford, that story ends with Deidre's death by suicide or by grief. Frankly, I am not eager to enact either case." Elizabeth slid Jane a pleading look.

"Let us try to keep it light, keep it simple. For all of our sakes," Jane ruled.

"What about Tristan and Isolde?" Rochford dared. "Think of all the handsome young gentlemen who would love to—"

"Again, the suicide, the grief," Elizabeth said tiredly. God help her if she had to explain to her already jealous husband why she would be throwing herself into the theatrical arms of some young groom of the privy chamber. She chucked aside her sewing. "Why do we need a story? Why not just something fantastical and exotic. Such as: the queen's ladies are Venetian contessas, besieged by the Turks, and are then rescued by English knights."

Farnley nodded, working out the sets and costumes in his mind. It would not take much effort to paint over the castle and turn it into a palazzo. The younger maids to the queen could flap about blue silk to simulate canals. He was almost afraid to say anything, afraid any request for confirmation would send the queen's rooms into another quagmire of disagreement. It had taken him two hours to get the women to agree thus far.

Jane shrugged. "That sounds perfectly respectable to me."

The Master of Revels wanted to clap and jump up and down. Finally. A decision. His mind went to work quickly. He looked at Elizabeth. "Now, as the lead, perhaps you get into some sort of battle with a Turk. He tries to carry you off, but you wrench yourself away from him. You two perform a dance to symbolize your struggle. Then, an English knight battles your attacker. He rescues you. Then you unmask one another, triumphant."

"Now Master Farnley, we have our leading Contessa. But we need our English knight. Do you think the Duke of Suffolk would privilege us—" Jane began to suggest.

"His Grace has been melancholy since his return from the North," Rochford cut her off at the pass.

Jane ignored the impertinence of the interruption. "Thank you, Lady Rochford," she said coolly. "You are always so well informed. Master Farnley, would you send word to my brother, Tom, and ask him if he would do Lissie the honor of saving her from the Turks. Now, if anyone would like to nominate a gentleman for the Turk—"

"Sir Francis," Elizabeth and Ursula said in unison. Even Jane could not fully fight back a laugh.

"Well, Master Farnley, there you have it."

He stood and bowed stiffly to the queen and her ladies that had pushed his patience to the breaking point. "Majesty, let me set my painters and dress-makers to work, and then I shall return to work out the dance steps with your gracious ladies."

Elizabeth was bustling back and forth between the costume storerooms when Ursula caught her sleeve.

"This arrived in the queen's rooms while you were arguing with Jane Boleyn about tragic heroines." Ursula tried to hand her a neatly sealed letter.

Elizabeth juggled the armful of silks in her arms. She peeped over her colorful bundle. "I'll read it later. Where is it marked from?"

Ursula flipped the letter over. "Cambridge, it seems."

Elizabeth's heart pounded. The only person she knew at Cambridge who had any reason to write to her was Cromwell's son, Gregory. He had not written her once. And he conveniently excused himself from his father's wedding by pleading his studies. Gregory had sent his father a single letter congratulating him on his new wife, and "new family," as Gregory coldly put it. Other than that, Elizabeth had no other evidence that Gregory even acknowledged her existence.

"On second thought, I can take the letter now," she said. "Just place it atop the pile."

"You look about ready to topple over. Why not wait until you have a free hand?"

"Just place it between my teeth, I'll make do," Elizabeth insisted. She wanted to snap that letter up and not let anyone see her reading it. Not let anyone like Jane Boleyn peer over her shoulder and then sweetly ask why Elizabeth had not yet been presented to Gregory, or any other members of Cromwell's family. She did not want to answer why she had never set foot in Cromwell's London house. Gripping the letter between her teeth, Elizabeth hurried back to the costume closet so she could break open the letter in private. She tossed aside the silks and took the letter from her teeth, spitting out the taste of paper. She broke open the seal and looked directly for the signature line. Gregory Cromwell. Elizabeth shut the letter. She'd wanted to write him, ask him for books, ask him to correct her Latin and French. Perhaps Gregory was finally opening the door? She opened the letter again, and her heart fell to her shoes. In precise, impersonal Latin, Gregory informed her that he hoped she was much recovered. Just a single sentence. She shoved the note into her pocket and wished that Gregory had never written her at all.

Elizabeth pushed everything and everyone out of her mind as she practiced her steps with the dance master. At certain steps, on certain notes, she had to slap open her collapsible fan with a single graceful stroke. On other cues, she needed to toss the fan in the air and catch it. At first, she rehearsed without her heels on, forcing the memory of the dance steps into her feet. She added her shoes back on, making sure the movement was as smooth as when she was barefoot. With her feet in accord, she then worked on the choreography with the fan. Bit by bit, she incorporated the foot work with the fan. Bit by bit, one step at a time, she thought.

**

Still invisible, still ostracized, Edward leaned against one of the gilded columns in the great hall. He nursed his wine, eager for this ridiculous masque to be over with so he could retreat back to his own rooms. Idle hands, he told himself. I will show Cromwell what these idle hands are capable of, Edward thought. Then let him see how much longer he wants to shut me out. After the scene he'd witnessed between Elizabeth and Cromwell, Edward could not resist sending a message to Cromwell, asking if he was now Master of the Wardrobe? The snide jest was not lost on Cromwell because hours later, Edward received a message from Cromwell saying that indeed, he had taken over the office, and his first act as master of the wardrobe would be to offload some of Elizabeth's used gowns onto Anne Stanhope. Of course, Cromwell wrote, one would probably have to let out the seams before Anne could squeeze into the gowns.

The musicians struck up a tune, and disinterestedly, Edward turned towards the center of the hall. The old stage castle had been painted over to look like a Venetian palazzo. Jane's ladies, hung out of the cut out windows, looking fearful for their virtue. Elizabeth appeared at the top, standing in the little balcony wearing…

Not much.

Edward almost choked on his wine. He could scarcely believe that Jane had allowed Elizabeth to appear in front of the entire court wearing a diaphanous tunic with no stomacher. The long sleeves, like those from the Orient, grazed her feet. The loose fitting tunic was loosely gathered beneath her breasts with a great broach. The fabric continually slipped down, revealing a bare shoulder. Her hair, loose and brushed out into waves, shimmered with tiny pearls.

He missed the ensuing Turkish siege because his eyes scanned the crowd for Cromwell. An excitement leapt up within Edward; he desperately wanted to watch the look on Cromwell's face as he realized that every man was dreaming of fucking his wife. Edward wanted to measure the color that drained from that schemer's face as he watched every man in the room undress Lissie with their eyes. Edward wanted to applaud. Not Lissie. Not Francis, wearing a ridiculous turban and hauling Elizabeth down for a battle royale. Edward wanted to clap for himself. The past two months, he had been deriding himself, questioning his judgment in marrying Elizabeth to Cromwell. Now he knew better: Elizabeth was the key to unraveling Cromwell. She would break his heart. And, the beauty was that he did not even need to instruct Elizabeth to do it. Sooner or later, she would mangle Cromwell's heart by simply being herself: self-absorbed, vain, and flirtatious.

Edward turned back to the masque. On cue with the music, Elizabeth gracefully tossed her fan in the air and expertly caught it behind her. Francis advanced on her, and Elizabeth threw the fan open with a satisfying crack through the air. Edward risked a glance at the throne. Far from appearing scandalized by her scantily clad sister, Jane smiled and nodded along with the music, grinning and clapping whenever Elizabeth tossed about that stupid fan. Henry licked his lips, his eyes narrow and hungry. With some noticeable effort, Henry tore his eyes from Elizabeth and instead devoured Ursula, who dutifully flapped some blue silk around with Jane Boleyn.

Finally, the good English knights arrived to save the maidens. Although, Edward doubted women covered by so little clothing could be considered maidens. His brother, Tom, ran out like a ninny in chainmail. Tom and Francis dueled a little, leaving Francis vanquished on the floor. Triumphantly, Tom picked Elizabeth up and twirled her in the air. The musicians struck their crescendo and Tom and Elizabeth unmasked one another to vigorous applause. Edward eagerly clapped, too. Not because he was particularly surprised that the girl with the copper-gold hair was his sister and the dark bearded Turk was Francis. Edward thought that the real actor throughout this whole production was none other than the Lord Privy Seal. Just a few steps, a few heartbeats from the throne, Cromwell stood still as marble, betraying only a slight pinching of his features. Cromwell had to smile and clap while the king and every other man in the room mentally undressed Elizabeth.

Edward started to edge his way towards Cromwell. He arrived in time to watch Elizabeth and Francis graciously bow to the king and queen. Edward stood a little to Cromwell's right as Elizabeth made her curtsey, revealing one perfectly formed calf and ankle as she stepped forward to sink down. Edward detected a slight tightening around Cromwell's jaw line, and his dark eyes closed, just a moment longer than a blink.

"How does it feel?" Edward asked quietly. Cromwell stepped back slightly, but continued to smile and applaud.

"How does it feel?" Edward asked again. Only a slight incline of Cromwell's head told Edward the other man acknowledged his presence, his question. Edward tilted his head towards Cromwell. "I ask you, scientifically, how does it feel when she breaks your heart? Does the pain come in your chest? Or is it more visceral, like a blow to the stomach? Perhaps like a cracked rib, a punctured kidney? No, maybe it's the tightening of the throat, the sting of bile coming up."

Cromwell had his placid, enigmatic face screwed on.

Edward shrugged. "Look at her. Shines like a diamond, does she not? Shines for everyone, but no one in particular."

"My lord," Cromwell replied at length. "Surely you can do better than that. You have had all day to come up new insults, new plots, but that is the best you can do? I think the privy council is richer for having lost you." He turned sharply on his heel and waded into the crowd, smiling and ready to do business.

**

Late that night, Elizabeth could not sleep, energized by her success at the masque. She flopped from her back over on to her stomach. She twitched then threw herself on her side. At last, Elizabeth began to believe that her life would mend, that she would reestablish her place back at court. The applause. The impressed murmurs when she did her little tricks with the fan. Underneath the sheets, Elizabeth's feet tapped in the dance steps. She'd never get to sleep at this rate. Sighing, she got out of bed and rummaged around the tray on the table by her bed. She threw back a sleeping draught in a single swallow. Wiping her mouth of the bitter taste, she chased the draught with a glass of wine. She crawled under the covers and slipped into shift of weight in the mattress awoke Elizabeth. Cromwell slipped between the covers, still warm and damp from his bath. Instinctively, she pressed herself into his flesh and clean soap smell.

"I thought tonight went well," she yawned. She only expected a few sleepy whispers between the two of them, not an entire dissection of her return to court. So, when Cromwell did not answer, at first she assumed he'd simply fallen asleep. But when his body remained tense and alert, Elizabeth rolled over to face him. His eyes were wide awake, blue and hollow. They just stared, unblinking, unfeeling. Perhaps he has slipped into one of his dark spells, Elizabeth thought. She burrowed her head against his chest and softly kissed his nipples. He just stared on.

"I think the masque pleased the king and queen," Elizabeth said. She ran a soft finger over the scars on his back, trying to coax him back from wherever his mind was leading him.

"I hated it," he said numbly. "I hated watching every man in that room undress you with his eyes. I hate that I must share you with the world."

She crushed herself against him. "But, you know that I am completely yours. What does it matter if other men look when you know that I come to you every night?" She tried to make light of it. "What would you do, Thomas? Veil me? Shut me up in seclusion like a Turkish concubine?"

He knotted his fingers through her hair, grabbing a hold of her as if he was afraid she would slip away. "I hate it," he said simply. "You sparkle, you dazzle, and I hate it. I wish you only shone for me."

Elizabeth shook her head. What was he talking about? Was it not her husband who informed her that she had to take the lead part tonight? He could hardly complain of other men looking when he put Elizabeth at the forefront.

"I do only shine for you. You get the best of me, Thomas. Why is that not enough for you?" she whispered against his chest. She deeply inhaled the smell of cloves and sandalwood. "Let them look, let them dream. You are my first, the only man I have ever known. The only man I ever will know. You can comfort yourself in the knowledge that you were the only man in that room who knew what was beneath my dress."

He edged a leg between her thighs and swept his hands underneath her satin nightshift, trying to work the fabric up and over her head. She fidgeted uncomfortably.

"We, we cannot," she said uncertainly, bringing his hands to rest on her hips. "We cannot, not for a few more weeks."

Cromwell toyed with the sheer, soft fabric standing between his hands and her body. "I know it," he said sadly. "I just need to feel your skin against mine, dove." She nodded and allowed him to pull her shift off; the gown fell behind her with a hush. She settled back against him, her belly against his, so that each rise and fall of his chest grazed her nipples. Satisfied, his hands settled at the small of her back and the pads of his fingers drew lazy patterns on her flesh. In the warm and naked intimacy with her husband, Elizabeth's eyes grew heavy. She planted a last kiss on his collar bone before easing into sleep.

"Do you love me?" he asked abruptly.

Elizabeth's eyes snapped open. What in God's name was he trying to get at tonight, Elizabeth wondered.

"Oh, Thomas, don't be ridiculous. Of course I do," she said rapidly so she would not have to think about the answer.

Far from being reassured, Cromwell retreated back to his dark, sullen depths. "Christ help us both if I should find that some other man has put his hands on you," he told her.

**

After much wrangling with the privy council, Cromwell had convinced the council that the best location to receive John Constable and Ralph Erlecker was Westminster. Henry whimsically insisted on Greenwich because he wanted the rebels to see their prince in his favorite palace, the most beautiful place in England. Cromwell, however, did not want to bedazzle the rebels. He wanted them shaking in their shoes when they came to kneel before the seat of power in England. Westminster was built to echo power, not beauty and pleasure. In the end, it took the artistic sensibilities of Farnley to convince Henry that if this were to be a play, then the best set was Westminster. Farnley described to Henry how the throne room would be laid out, who would stand where, in order to beat into the thick head of the rebels the crown's supremacy.

In a serious break with decorum, Elizabeth would stand with her husband next to the throne of England, instead of watching in a discreet balcony with the rest of the queen's ladies. Both Farnley and Henry suggested to Jane that she sit next to her consort in order to dispel any lingering vicious rumors about the queen's communion with sin. Cromwell politely objected in his usual unassuming way, pointing out that Jane's presence might send the wrong signal to the rebels of the queen's tacit support—which Cromwell swore up and down he did not believe. Instead, he argued Elizabeth was the far better choice: let the rebels see the king stand behind his much slandered sister-in-law. Force Constable to look Elizabeth in the eye, make him look upon the girl whom he had branded a whore and a witch.

Of course, when the palace guards threw open the doors, Constable and Erlecker knew nothing of the dozen small compromises that went into the scene laid before them. The large room practically burst at the seams with bejeweled courtiers. As Constable and Erlecker advanced, padding sheepishly along the carpet, the velvet and silk clad bodies parted like the Red Sea. When they moved to make way, Constable could just make out a gilded throne on the horizon. Erlecker's eyes darted around, so much finery that he was unsure of where to look first. Constable could not tear his eyes from the gilded ceiling, painted blue as the Madonna's cloak.

The king sat on his throne, raised by several steps, to make him seem even more imposing. As if Constable needed any reminding that man sitting in the fine chair could order his execution at any moment. Erlecker and Constable sank to their knees, humbled. Neither man dared to peer upwards at the king's boots, but Constable could not resist a sidelong glance at the ominous, black robed figure who stood closer to the throne than anyone else. Constable held the man's gaze; never having seen Thomas Cromwell before, Constable now thought that he could pick that devil out of the crowd anywhere. In addition to the gold chain of his office, Cromwell wore a strained face of barely contained contempt as he looked down upon Constable's balding head. Constable risked another look. He had never seen a man's eyes shift color the way Cromwell's did as they progressed from blue, to grey, to pitch black. A disdainful sigh from Cromwell made Constable look at the floor again.

King Henry drummed his fingers against the arm-rest of the throne, oblivious to fine carved worksmanship of the gilded wood and the sumptuous tapestries draped behind him. Henry sized up the rebels who had almost brought his country to disaster, and spoke.

"Gentlemen I ask you this, what king has kept his subject so long in wealth and peace, so ministered justice equally to those high and low? And kept you from all outward enemies?" Henry tugged at his wedding ring and rocked back and forth in his throne, as if itching for the perfect moment to strike.

At the lull, Constable snuck another glance at Cromwell, to see if he was the very picture of greed and sin that Constable had imagined. With his rich black robes, pale skin, and dark brows, Cromwell did not disappoint. In that same glance, Constable caught sight of a young woman standing in between Cromwell and the Duke of Suffolk. He marveled at the richness in her gown: bright cerulean silk, with an underskirt embroidered with diamonds and sapphires. A long string of black pearls looped round and round her neck so that one link fit against her white neck like a choker, while her small hands played with another link that hung down to her waist. She rolled the pearls between her bejeweled fingers. Constable thought, this must be the queen. Who else could afford such a dress, such a rare necklace? Although, she seemed younger than he had been led to sensing the weight of his stare, the young girl's eyes met his, locking on his face. Her big blue eyes narrowed and hardened. She set her full pink lips into a determined scowl that rivaled that of Cromwell's. Constable wished Aske were here so he could see that the queen was nothing sweet, nothing like the milk and honey that everyone said. She was a coldly beautiful woman, with an apparently limitless appetite for jewel encrusted gowns. No, this queen of diamonds and ice was no friend of theirs.

Henry abruptly stood, adopting a wide legged stance. His voiced boomed with indignation. "I've read your first submission. Your pretence is that you seek to maintain faith." Henry paced, bursting with the energy of his anger. "But, I tell you now gentlemen, nothing is more contrary to God's commandment than rebellion! Rising like madmen against your prince, leaving lands untilled and corn unsown is not the proper behavior of the commonwealth that you claim to be!"

Henry's tirade picked up in speed and volume. He pointed angrily at the two men kneeling at his feet, as if to signal to the court: here are the rebels, here are the men directly responsible for the collapse in grain supplies and wool trade. Cromwell sharpened his glare on Constable. Behind those black eyes, Constable could only imagine the calculations forming in Cromwell's brain, estimating the income he'd lost on lands and wool in the North. Income that only belonged to Cromwell because he'd usurped Lissie Seymour's holdings.

"Majesty, I feel compelled to—" Constable began to explain.

Quick as ever, Cromwell cut him off, pompously declaring: "Hush, you are before the King's Majesty!" Cromwell skewered Constable with another challenging gaze. A man with a sense of humor might laugh behind his hand: Cromwell lecturing a man about a lack of deference. Constable started to turn back to the king, but something caught Constable's eye, something he could not believe he missed. On his ring finger, Cromwell wore a large emerald of such a deep green, the gem was almost black. The woman standing beside him also wore an emerald on her ring finger. The ring kept slipping off her reed-like finger, although she determinedly shoved it back on. Her ring, almost as large as Cromwell's stone, shone brightly, refracting the light into a thousand prisms. He realized she stood a few inches closer to Cromwell than she did to Suffolk. My God, Constable thought. That serpent, Cromwell, has dragged his whore up here to face met. Does he mean to dare me to say something to her face? John thought.

"You make false claims about our intentions towards the Church!" Henry continued. "We have done nothing, but what the clergy in Canterbury and York agreed was in accordance with God's holy word!" Henry grew breathless in his rant. Even though a few beads of sweat formed at the royal hairline, Henry still awed the subjects trembling below the tip of his boots.

"_God's holy word_!" Henry bellowed. "So, how can the simple people say contrary?" Henry scanned the faces of the onlooking courtiers. "What presumption is it of them to claim knowledge of God's law? When they are _ignorant_," Henry spat out the word as if it tasted ill in his mouth. "And less knowledgeable, and should rather know their duties." A murmur rippled through the court. Henry reseated himself on the throne, collecting himself. "You have seen elsewhere, in Lincolnshire, how temperate and forgiving is our inclination. The rebellion is against God's will. I declare my intentions through the pity and compassion of our princely hearts: to pardon all of you who have transgressed, on condition that you now lay down your arms. His Grace, the Duke of Suffolk will come north again to Yorkshire, to moderate with you and make peace. And see you disbanded. Good day, Gentlemen."

Constable gazed up on his prince's face, trying to read his intentions. But Henry's face was a mask, royal, resolute, impenetrable. Constable indulged himself in a final staring contest with the Lord Privy Seal. Doubt nagged at Constable as he watched a smirk play across Cromwell's face. Clearly, Cromwell was not concerned about a royal pardon because the weasel probably knew there was no true pardon. Constable thought that if only Robert Aske had had the bullocks to come to London himself, he would see the truth: that the son of a blacksmith, and not the Duke of Suffolk, stood closest to the throne. That Lissie Seymour was not a little kitten anymore. Cromwell, sweating on top of her at night, had made sure of that. He'd sharpened her claws, maybe even taught her how to hate a little.

**

Later that evening, after the feasting, after watching Lissie Seymour dance around and cock-tease every man in the room like a paid harlot, Constable and Erlecker were just about to settle into their rooms. Both men bolted up when Charles Brandon swung open the door without announcement.

Constable took the lead. "Your Grace should know our army of pilgrims will not disperse just for the _promise _of a pardon." Brandon hung his head sheepishly, helplessly. Everyone in that room knew that Brandon was no longer closest to the throne. "Our pilgrimage is not over," Constable added.

"I do know," Brandon replied sympathetically. "And I have told the king." He tilted his head, looking earnest, wanting to speaking the truth. "That is why he has given me permission to negotiate with you further. In good faith."

"On the basis of our petition?" Erlecker asked skeptically.

"Yes."

"Does Your Grace have some token of his…good faith?" Constable thought this all mockery. Cromwell would never let Brandon keep whatever promises were made. Not while Cromwell had a breath in his body—which Constable hoped to cure him of.

"You don't trust my word?" Brandon did not understand. Promises were kept in his world of jousts and courtly love.

"Not for me," Constable said. "For our captain, Mister Aske….he's a…_lawyer_." Constable tried not to hold that against Aske, but sometimes he resented barristers and their wordsmithing.

"Mmmhmm." Brandon became cryptic, as if he would like to complain about a lawyer, too. He handed Constable a sealed letter. "Here is a promise in his Majesty's own hand, promising to deal with you openly and honestly. Fairly, reasonably—as his loving subjects."

Constable just stared, leaving the letter hovering in limbo. At length, Erlecker stepped forward and took the letter. "We are grateful and bound to his Majesty."

About an hour after Brandon bid them a good evening, a sharp knock came at the door. Before Constable could stop him, Erlecker threw open the door without a caution as to who stood on the other side. Elizabeth Seymour did not wait to be invited inside. She brushed past Erlecker dismissively, trailing the scent of orange flower water. Her skirt, sewn heavy with diamonds, appeared animated as the light of the fire bounced off of them. The shaky light of the fire by turns hid and revealed the red in her hair.

She stood with her hands on her hips. "Do you know who I am?" she asked bluntly.

"You're wife to the Lord Privy Seal. Sister to her Majesty the queen," Constable answered because Erlecker just stood, a waste of space and stupidly gaping at the grand lady. "It's an impressive list of credentials," he added flippantly.

"Yes, I like to think so." She circled the room, picking up objects, and putting them down again. Browsing, but wholly unimpressed. "You and me, John Constable, we have never met before." She said it as a statement, so Constable did not think she expected an answer. She went to the window, rocked up on her tip-toes, evaluating the view. She turned to face him again, her features as sharp and flawless as the glass behind her.

"Six months ago, I wager you had never heard my name," Elizabeth continued. "You do not know me, yet, you circulate vicious poison about me. Never once met me, but so eager to celebrate my misfortune." She pulled one of the pamphlets out of heavily embroidered sleeve. She tossed it away from her disgustedly. "I lose a child, but you and yours call me a sinner, a witch, a whore."

Erlecker stared at his muddy boots, but Constable would not be shamed like a schoolboy. He brazenly stared on. She scowled. Must have learned that from her husband, Constable thought.

"I'm not supposed to be here," she admitted.

"So, why are you?" he shot back.

She twiddled the black pearls of her necklace. "To tell you this: I am no friend of yours. Whatever the queen's sympathy, I will never let her risk her neck for the likes of you." She walked in a circle. "You think it matters to me if I answer to the king, to the Pope, or to the emperor of China? You think I stay awake at night wondering if the body of Christ is flesh or bread? You think that whether my husband was born a lord or a chimney sweep changes the fact that I have to sleep beside him every night?" She closed in on Constable. "I just want to keep my saints, keep the blessings of the Virgin. I like to hear the Mass in Latin because I think it sounds more beautiful that way." She raised her hand to her forehead. "And you, you pulled a good man like Robert Aske, into this mess. That man is the only reason that I know how to read and write. Without his kindness, his patience, I would be near illiterate like my sister. Sometimes I think I am more fond of him than my own father. He is the most honest, decent man I have met, and you will drag him down with you. Him and half of the kingdom."

She shrugged and turned to leave, as if she knew her sermon fell on deaf ears. She paused at the door. "Robert Aske is worth fifty of your kind: spouting vulgarities and reeking of mutton. I would not part with a pence to save your life, Constable. But I will not let you bring Mister Aske to harm." She surveyed the room and the men in it one last time. With her hand on the door, she said, "Good night gentlemen. I am to bed. Of all your foul lies Constable, you were quite right: I am nothing but a whore."


	13. Chapter 13

Elizabeth pressed her head against the window, as if she could push past the glass and see into the clouds. The sky by turns lightened and darkened, and the winds rolled the clouds away only to again veil the sun. She turned from the window and rubbed out the numbness in her forehead.

"Snow," she said. "Definitely snow."

"You're always on the scent for the first snow," Jane smiled.

"No, too early in the season," Lady Rochford said unhelpfully.

"Well, perhaps not yet, but by tomorrow," Elizabeth insisted.

"You and Tom owe me a walk when the first snow falls," Jane said. "But I am warm and dry by my fire, and I am not going out of doors until snow blankets everything."

Elizabeth grinned back. She and her siblings always made a great fuss about the first snow of the winter. Elizabeth and Tom would pelt each one another with icy cannon fire, while Jane and Edward carefully picked their way through the pristine snow. They would shout at Elizabeth and Tom to leave as few tracks as possible and insist on returning home only in the tracks already laid.

"Besides, Lissie, I thought you and Tom reached a truce," Jane pointed out.

"It's true," Elizabeth explained to every woman in the room who was not a Seymour. "Last Christmastide, my snow wars with Tom became so ferocious that my father ordered an armistice. I may not shove snow down his breeches; he must refrain from stuffing it down the front of my gown."

"Goodness," Lady Rochford clucked. "And here this whole time I hear, 'Tom', and I assume you are speaking of your husband. But, you do not speak of him very often, do you, Lissie?"

Elizabeth reluctantly left her post at the window as sentry of the snow. She leveled a dead-pan glare at Jane Boleyn.

"Lady Rochford," she said smoothly. "If I were to run about and pelt Thomas Cromwell with snow, I'd likely find myself in the Tower."

Her sister punctured the silence with a low, rolling laugh. Rochford joined in awkwardly, unsure if she was the butt of the jest or not. Elizabeth sat down next to Jane and returned to the menial task of pushing cloves into oranges for pomanders. She quickly scanned the room for Ursula: no Lady Misseldon. Elizabeth's shoulders knotted as she realized that Ursula was probably doing her royal duty of keeping the king's bed warm. Her mouth frowned of its own will. Just because Jane shut her eyes and mouth did not mean that Elizabeth relished her friend sleeping with her sister's husband. Jane watched Elizabeth's eyes track the room for Ursula.

"The Lady Mary will keep Christmas court with us at Greenwich," Jane said to no one in particular. The queen's rooms murmured and cooed with approval. "Lissie, fetch a quill and some parchment. We shall write to the Lady Mary to tell her she need only bring herself. We expect no gifts from her."

Back in Jane's private bedchamber, Elizabeth seated herself at the small table, quill hovering over the parchment.

"We shall write to Lady Bryan. Tell her it pleases our Majesty that the Lady Elizabeth share in the Christmastide…that Lady Bryan escort his Majesty's daughter to Greenwich. However, in order to ease the king's many burdens, Lady Bryan should make any discrete inquiries to myself alone," Jane nodded, satisfied. Elizabeth sprinkled sand over the ink and handed the paper to Jane. She dabbed a bit more ink on the quill and passed the sharp plume to Jane. Her sister's face tightened in concentration as she carefully wrote her own name.

Quietly, so the other ladies could not hear, Elizabeth said: "Jane, it's not too late to learn your letters. I could help you if you are shy. No one else need know."

Jane buried her hands in her ermine sleeves. "I know enough to fulfill my duties as queen." The fire popped, startling both sisters, when one of the maids added scented cones to the fire.

"At least you would not have to depend on myself or Lady Rochford. You could converse, correspond freely with whomever you choose," Elizabeth gently pushed. She did not add: and then Jane Boleyn would not have to know all of the Seymour business. Her sister said nothing. In the silence, Elizabeth puzzled yet again over the discrepancy in education between the two of them. Perhaps female literacy had come back into fashion by the time I was born, Elizabeth thought.

"I think it is too late for me," Jane sadly concluded. "You were blessed to have Master Aske take an interest in your learning."

"I know it," Elizabeth agreed solemnly.

"Lissie?"

"Please, Jane." Elizabeth knew where the subject of Robert Aske would lead. "Please, do not ask it of me again."

"Lissie, just speak to your husband, try to soften Lord Cromwell's heart towards Master Aske."

"Jane," Elizabeth sighed. "You must understand. Trying to plead mercy and clemency is as pleading treason in my husband's eyes. _You_ speak with his Majesty."

"His Majesty thinks whatever Lord Cromwell suggests that he think," Jane said coldly. She relented a bit. "Lissie—"

"No! No. I am exhausted enough as it is by my husband's suspicion of my imaginary lovers. No. I cannot give him an actual reason to distrust me." Elizabeth chewed her lip in frustration. And so it would begin again: convoluted loyalties, whispered accusations under the bed sheets. She and Cromwell would be back to where they started. Cromwell circling her like a wolf, she constantly alert for a blow that could come from nowhere.

"Lissie, I beg of you to keep this to yourself."

"Jane—" Elizabeth held up a hand to stop her sister from telling yet another secret she would have to keep from Cromwell.

"The king is in earnest. He will have Master Aske to Christmas court," Jane blurted out. "And, I fear for his safety. Can you not plead some sort of truce, in the spirit of Christ's love, that Lord Cromwell not move against Robert Aske?" Jane's sea green eyes held their own against the sharp blue of Elizabeth's. "For the tenderness and love I know you bear Master Aske."

One of the ladies pattered into the room. "Lissie!" she exclaimed. "It's snowing."

Elizabeth's eyes did not move from Jane's face. "I told you all," she muttered.

Jane shrugged. "It's only the first snow. It probably won't stick."

****

A peal of laughter snuck past the thick panes of glass. It drew Cromwell to the window of his Greenwich offices. He rested his forehead against the cold glass and watched below as Elizabeth and her brother, Tom, chased each other through the white powder. Jane walked on Edward's arm, burying her head against his shoulder, as if he could protect her from the onslaught.

Cromwell sighed at the picture: the four blonde, perfect Seymours making their way through a perfect, golden, snow-covered world. He did not doubt for a moment that those golden angels below thought of him as some warty toad that occasionally trespassed in their garden.

Except Elizabeth—he prayed.

Cromwell watched helplessly as Sir Francis ran up behind Elizabeth and dumped a handful of ice down the back of her cloak. She squealed and laughed. In truth, her deep throaty laughter seemed like it would belong to a much bigger woman. Cromwell frowned: he could not remember ever making her laugh. Edward had asked him how it felt when Lissie broke his heart. Well Edward, he thought, if you could read my mind right now then you would know that the sound of Elizabeth's laughter at another man's joke is like a dagger through my temples. Cromwell closed his eyes against the sight of Elizabeth, rosy-cheeked and cheerful, arm in arm with Tom Seymour and Francis Bryan.

Edward had told Cromwell: give it a month. Now, six weeks later, Cromwell tortured himself. He wondered if Edward was right, and Elizabeth only loved her husband that one day, by default alone. He sighed heavily. Christ, is this what all lovesick men do? Stand about sighing and closing their eyes painfully, he wondered. If he'd know so, he would have been far more patient with Thomas Wyatt. Cromwell wanted to turn away from the window, but he couldn't. Not with Lissie looking so radiant. She'd put back on some of the weight she'd lost. Now, apple cheeked and bright eyed, she walked behind the queen, flakes of snow twirling around her red-gold hair like a halo. With her hood pushed back and her profile illuminated by the white sky, she literally took her husband's breath away.

She said she loved him.

But, only when he asked her. She nestled her head against his chest at night, welcoming his kisses and responding with her own. However, that was all she responded with. They could try and conceive another child now. In fact, they could have been trying for the past two weeks. Cromwell had kept careful count of the days remaining when they could be together again. Truly be with each other. Either Elizabeth was very poor with numbers, or (and Cromwell feared this was the case) she did not want to lay with her husband. He thought, or at least hoped, that after all they had been through together she would _want_ to make love with him. Instead, she wriggled away from him when he tried to part her thighs. The past few nights, her navel had become like a line of demarcation; as soon as his fingers stroked below, she would gently place his hands back on her waist.

Perhaps Edward was right, and nothing could make Cromwell loveable. He finally turned away from the golden court below—only to find Rich standing before his desk.

"Richard, you might have cleared your throat or something," Cromwell said, irritated that Rich had just witnessed his private moment at the window.

Rich did not wait for an invitation to sit. He flung himself in the chair and looked up at his master with grave eyes. "My lord, I have failed you," he said simply.

"You have gone and left your wife for a Catholic."

"One got past me." Rich's eyes flickered to the side for a moment, instructing Cromwell's to do the same. Glancing over Rich's shoulder, Cromwell saw a man bending down to place some papers on a clerk's desk.

"I don't believe I know him yet," Cromwell said carefully.

"You do not. But, it has come to my attention that others do," Rich replied with equal care. He mouthed the name "Gardiner." Cromwell leaned back into his chair. So, it had finally happened. A genuine spy had pierced the veil of Cromwell's siege machine. You always had to assume that the maids turning down your bed, or the boys pouring your wine, might sell some information for a few schillings. But the men who wore your livery coats and carried your letters? A more dangerous breach by far.

"I can make it look like an accident," Rich said behind his hand.

Cromwell raised his palm, stopping Rich. "No, no he may have his uses yet. But, keep him away from my letters." He toyed with his emerald ring and decided to change tack. "About Edward Seymour. We need to return him to our warm and familial graces."

Rich rolled his eyes. "But is absence has been cherished. I enjoy sitting down with the council without his ferret eyes darting everywhere."

"He's festering. God knows when Tom Wyatt broods, it's endearing. But when Edward Seymour does it? Well, that is downright dangerous."

Rich's chubby fingers stroked his copper beard. "I don't suppose I will be the one to deliver the happy news to Lord Edward?"

Cromwell raised a single eye brow as an initial response. "Tell Edward he may write me to tell of his thanks."

Rich lurched out of his seat like a grubby disappointed child. He stomped off to tell Edward Seymour that he would have his seat again with the Privy Council. Cromwell returned to the work piled at his desk. First order of business? Fire off a letter to his son, Gregory. Cromwell usually expected to send five letters to Gregory for every one that he received from his son. But now, with Lissie in the picture, the ratio had deepened even further. The embarrassing thing was that Cromwell had initially thought to marry Elizabeth off to Gregory, once he realized Jane Seymour was in the king's eye. But in a moment of naked honesty with himself, Cromwell had been forced to face the fact that he was desperately, secretly in love with Elizabeth. Marry Elizabeth to Gregory? Good God, he would have ended up like Sir John Seymour, lusting after his son's wife. Clandestinely shoving her up against a bookcase and fucking her while his son's back was turned.

Cromwell sharpened a quill and his thoughts. He wrote:

_Gregory,_

_You __will__ come to London for Christmastide. You __will __present yourself to my new wife, and show her every respect and courtesy that she deserves. If you do not, I think you will quickly discover that your tuition charges do not pay themselves. Your cousins, Richard and Kit, miss you. I miss you. Write more._

_Your loving father,_

_Thomas Cromwell_

He quickly dripped the sealing wax over the letter before anyone else could possibly chance by and see what was lurking in his heart. He waved Ralph Sadler over to him. Ralph, forever smiling, bounded over like a colt. God, he thought, why could You not have given me a smiling son like Ralph? A son that does not blame me for the deaths of his mother and sisters?

"See that this makes it to my son at Cambridge, as soon as possible."

Ralph took the neatly folded letter and pressed it to him, already trying to keep it safe and dry. "I will, sir. I will see to it right away." He nodded vigorously. Ralph marched off, once again, into the battlefield of Cromwell's convoluted personal life.

Cromwell was about to settle back into the rhythm of drafting legislation when the sound of heavy, wet footsteps distracted him. Without meaning to, he looked up to find Edward Seymour tracking snow through his offices.

"Edward, when I tell you to write your gratitude, it means I do not want to actually see you," Cromwell grumbled. Edward helped himself to some wine.

"So, you want me back."

"You make it seem as if I have been pining for you."

"That must have been a pretty sight below your window. Lissie galloping through the snow with Francis Bryan. He gallops through my wife every night, so beware. Do you think it was an accident that I led them right under your nose?"

"Edward, as governor of the Jersey Isles, I can ensure that you actually are delivered to your post and never return."

Edward grinned wolfishly at Cromwell's stern face. "Lord Cromwell, you need me for something. Why not come out and ask for it like an honest gentleman?"

Cromwell drummed his fingers against his desk. He studied Edward emotionless face for a moment before replying. "Robert Aske has been invited to Christmas court. No doubt the queen told you, but made you swear you would not breathe a word of it. If only the queen knew that I drafted the invitation in my own hand while the king watched."

Edward leaned forward, interested. He liked secrets within secrets.

"So," Cromwell continued. "I need you to lodge Master Aske, entertain him. But mind that you encourage him to write down every detail of every step, every breath taken by those traitorous rebels. Hold Aske off from the king, but say that in the meantime, he should put into writing everything he thought, did, said."

"The old fool will be transcribing his own confession."

"Precisely."

Edward rubbed his palms together in anticipation. "Anything else?"

Cromwell tugged at his wedding ring. "Above all, you are to keep Aske at a distance from your sister."

"Which one?" Edward smirked.

"_Both_ of them." Cromwell nodded to indicate that Edward was dismissed.

As he stood to leave, Edward cocked his head, sizing up Cromwell. Sizing up this new partnership. This conspiracy. Then, Edward smiled. "You know, I think I might be able to like you, Lord Cromwell, or at least I would be able to if you were not fucking my sister."

With Edward Seymour indebted to him yet again, Cromwell allowed the insult to slide like water off his back. He watched the back of Edward's head fade to the furthest recess of his office and wondered what that blonde head would look like detached from the body. Ah, I will get him soon enough, Cromwell consoled himself. It would be an awkward conversation to have with Lissie, but he imagined telling her: "Now, sweetheart, just be happy I did not kill the brother you like best." Having fantasized enough about dispatching Edward to the dark, he turned back to his work.

He scribbled a letter that was so completely unlike him, he scarcely recognized his own writing. Instead of his usual veiled innuendos and equivocations, he drafted a rather bald piece of work. He put in some filler, then cringed as he wrote: _their rebellion shall be crushed so forcibly that their example shall be fearful to all subjects so long as the world does endure_. Anyone who knew him, say Rich, knew Cromwell never laid his intentions bare when he wrote. But, you don't know me, do you, John Constable? You don't know the first thing about me, do you, Robert Aske? Cromwell allowed himself to smile, then he pleasantly called Gardiner's agent over to him.

"This is for the Lancashire herald. See that it is dispatched immediately." The aide took the letter with a curt bow. Cromwell smiled again, just to put the man at ease.

***

That night was a full moon. Elizabeth marched her husband out to the garden that was illuminated by the grey glow of the moon light. Snow crunched beneath their boots, shattering the stillness.

"There! There! Do you see it?" Elizabeth pointed excitedly. For the life of him, Cromwell had no idea what she was looking at. He stared blankly.

"I see a moon. I see snow."

"Oh!" Elizabeth threw up her hands in frustration at his lack of artistic sensibility. "Can you not see how the light from the moon reflects on the snow, turning it blue, purple, grey, all at once?" She stomped forward a few paces and waved her arms wildly about, as if she could direct his accountant's eye to the very thing her artist's eyes saw so clearly.

She will be a good mother, Cromwell thought, attuned to the small miracles in this world. An always ready sense of wonder.

Elizabeth gave one lingering look at the moon before trudging back to Cromwell. "I wish I had the skill to paint that," she said sadly.

He envisioned her towing the children out on a night such as this, carrying the easels and paints, while the little ones chased after her skirts, batting one another with the paint brushes. Without meaning to, Cromwell said exactly what he had been thinking: "You will be a good mother."

She whipped her head around. "What?" Elizabeth appeared half-way alarmed. Her blue eyes grew wide. She bit down on her lower lip—a gesture that made Cromwell want to throw her down on the snow and get down to the business of making babies right here and now.

Elizabeth made a desperate change of subject. "Gregory will be coming for Christmas?" she asked eagerly. "I know his studies have kept him at Cambridge, but surely I will get to meet him by New Year?"

Cromwell did not have the heart to tell her that Gregory did not want to meet her and would only do so under the pressures of mild extortion.

"And your niece and nephew? Perhaps maybe not at Greenwich. Perhaps I could visit them, at one of your London houses?" Elizabeth pursued.

He did not know how to put it to her: Lissie, they do not want to know you either. He did not know how to explain to her that she could not be trusted at his townhouses, with all the German books and German priests passing through with all the chests of gold.

"Dove, your place is at court, serving the queen," he said gently. "You will meet them all…eventually." He pulled her closer to him as they walked.

"Can you keep a secret?" she asked tentatively.

"Ah, confess your sins my child."

"Jane has a mind to invite the Lady Elizabeth to Christmas court, to surprise the king. Do you think it would please his Majesty?"

"What pleases the king in the morning may enrage him by supper." Cromwell bitterly noted that Elizabeth had decided to keep the secret of Robert Aske between herself and the queen. And if Jane stoked Henry's displeasure, throwing Anne Boleyn's baby back in the king's face, Cromwell could not say he would lose any sleep over that. As long as he had Lissie in his bed, he could give a fig if the other Seymours met unpleasant ends.

He wrapped an arm around Elizabeth's waist. "Sweetheart, we might try and conceive again…my love, we could…well it's been over a month. We might try again." There was no subtle way about it, was there?

"Oh." She stared ahead. Cromwell wanted to rip her hood back from her head so he could see her eyes. Measure and analyze what she truly thought.

"It's been six weeks…" he wished he had not given such a precise figure. It made him seem as if he had been counting the days. Which he had.

"Right, of course," she said distantly.

"My knees are buckling under the weight of your enthusiasm," he replied sharply. She said nothing, but instead fiddled with the ermine trimming of her cloak. He moved his arm up to encircle her shoulders. "Lissie, it's cold. Let us go inside. We could take a hot bath together." He tried to tempt her, but her shoulders stiffened. Cromwell lost his patience.

"What?" he snapped. "What is this? I am your husband. You are my wife. I should not even have to ask you like this."

"I'm afraid to be pregnant again," she whispered into the cold. "I was so sick, I thought I might die. What if I lose another child?"

"I promise you, it will be much better," Cromwell lied. When it came to a woman in her childbed, there were no guarantees. Only prayers, and the shadow of death looming around every corner, indiscriminately choosing which mothers and which children to steal.

The siege broke, and Elizabeth laid down her arms as she undressed for bed that night. She held her hair—and her breath—as she let Cromwell untie the laces of her stays. He wished he were the sort of man who might be unable in the face of his wife's unwillingness. The hardening of his prick at the sight of her bare shoulders told him he was most certainly not that man. Running his hands over her shift, he gently teased her nipples and slid a hand over her belly to rest between her legs. She made no move to correct him, but she did not sigh with delight either.

He turned her to face him. "I want you to be happy. I want you to enjoy this. Tell me how to please you." He bent his head to kiss her neck.

"Thomas, I am afraid to be with child again," she whispered into his hair.

He cupped her face in his hands. "Dove, don't think about that. Just be here. Be with me, here and now." His kissed her deeply while he fumbled with the buttons on his jacket. The warmth of the kiss must have reassured her because she wrapped her arms around him, helping him pull off his jacket. He broke the kiss long enough to pull his undershirt over his head. As he reclaimed her mouth, her shy, unsteady hands tried to undo the laces of his hose.

"My hands are still cold from the walk," Elizabeth said apologetically.

He took her small hands and brought them to his lips, kissing them back to warmth. "Crawl into bed where it's warm," he smiled. "I can see to myself."

He eased himself under the covers behind her. He wrapped his entire body around hers. "Tell me where you want my hands, tell me how you like to be touched."

She tipped her head back for another kiss. Instead of answering, she guided one hand to her breast and another between her legs. "Please," was all she could manage as her breathing picked up in speed when he stroked the little bud of flesh.

He rolled her onto her stomach so he could take her from behind, the way he had first wanted to, months ago when she was not yet his wife. When he had her arms pinned behind her and for a wild moment, anything seemed possible in that dark room. Now, her back arched like a cat when he pushed himself deep inside. He draped himself over her, a stag mounting and covering his doe.

"Oh, God," he said feebly. He would barely last with her this warm and wet. He paused to collect himself, but she leaned back against him.

"Please," she whispered. Already her body was pulsing in anticipation of his thrusts. "Please. I want to."

He rode her gently at first, letting his hands roam her body. But as her moans deepened, he fucked her harder and faster. He wrenched her head back so he could look her in the eyes, know that she was not dreaming of another man behind her.

He nuzzled his face into her neck. "Come with me, my love. Come with me." She wailed something indistinguishable when he flooded into her and he dug his fingers into her hips. He lay against her for what might have been an eternity or only a moment. Neither of them spoke. Just the sound of their breath, and the crackle of the dry wood on the fire.

Eventually, her hand wandered back to find his own, her fingers weaving through his. After a while, after her breathing evened out, she spoke.

"I love you," she said, faintly surprised. "Thomas, I love you."

The unprovoked words terrified him. He wanted to shout, are you mad? Don't you know I don't deserve it? How could she possibly love him after all the things he had seen and done. Perhaps because she did not know all of his awful secrets, perhaps because she only knew him as the king's chief minister, she could even contemplate loving him. The less she knew about him, the better. He needed to keep it that way.

***

"How in God's name are we supposed to banish idolatry and superstition and empty rituals of the Church when they are still practiced here at court?" Rich sneered. Cromwell could give Rich nothing other than a sigh and an apologetic half-smile. The king had wanted a magnificent evening mass on Christmas Eve to show Aske that London was not Nuremburg. Now, instead of preparing his papers for the next day, Cromwell was trapped in an uncomfortable geography: next to Catherine Brandon and directly across the aisle from Robert Aske. Even worse, the king chose Gardiner to perform the mass instead of Cranmer.

Cromwell cast a discreet, disapproving glance over Catherine Brandon. Her husband dressed her like she was twenty years older than she actually was. He imagined that Brandon kept her dowdy in order to keep younger men at bay. Sometimes, Cromwell feared his jealous love of his wife would be the death of either him or Lissie. But that did not prevent him from lavishing a small fortune on her wardrobe every month. He returned his attention to Robert Aske and his glare sharpened like a knife. Cromwell thought if he studied Aske enough, he could unravel him, learn what made him so damn special to Elizabeth. Because he once doted on her like a fond schoolmaster? Elizabeth was a fool if she thought that Aske had never once conjured her without her clothes.

Aske must have sensed the searing heat of Cromwell's stare because he looked up from his pious, folded hands. Their eyes locked for a moment. He felt Aske was challenging him, but to what? Aske turned to speak to Edward, who kept one eye on the conversation, and another eye on Cromwell. Edward signaled back across the aisle, with his palm flat and the other hand making a scribbling motion. Good: Edward had Aske writing away his innocence. Tired of trying to decode Robert Aske, Cromwell allowed his attention to drift towards the front of the chapel, where Elizabeth stood behind the king and queen and alongside Mary Tudor. Every so often, their heads would dip together to exchange a few words. Cromwell desperately wanted to know what his wife could possibly have to say to the Lady Mary. He twitched with anxiety as he watched the queen, Mary, and Elizabeth simultaneously turn and smile at Aske. He puzzled again: what made Aske so special to those women? The thought of Elizabeth cherishing that traitorous Papist made Cromwell's throat close up with barely contained anger.

***

Mary dipped her head in towards Elizabeth, inviting conversation. She glanced about to make sure her husband's attention was elsewhere before she spoke.

"Lady Mary, is it true you can see Robert Aske?"

Mary's fingers reached out to graze the back of Elizabeth's palm. She felt a small slip of paper pushed into her hand, and her fingers quickly snapped shut.

"Master Aske says that you grew up, and he wishes it were not so," Mary whispered. "He says he hopes Lord Cromwell is a decent husband to you." Mary stopped talking long enough to light her candle from the flame passed down from bishop to king to queen. She leaned in closer to Elizabeth so that she could light her candle from Mary's. "I can get a message to him, if you want."

"Just tell him that I think only good of him, and I think of him always." Elizabeth turned around so that Jane Boleyn could in turn light her candle. She had an un-Christian thought and wondered what would happen if she accidentally lit Jane Boleyn's mink stole on fire. As she turned back to Mary, her eyes met Cromwell's. He raised his eyebrow at her in reproof, a stern warning to cease and desist her conversation with Mary Tudor.

"I fear for Master Aske, I am so afraid for him," Mary continued.

"Why?" Elizabeth mouthed.

Mary snorted. Her sweet face belied a cynical appreciation of the world. "Why? Why? Because I know my father, and you know your husband." Mary smiled and nodded at Aske. "That poor, old fool believes in the word of the king and minister. He should never have come to London at all."

Ursula tipped forward on her toes, placing her mouth near Elizabeth's ear. "It's half dark in here, but the glow in your cheeks could light up the whole chapel."

"I've been sitting too close to the fire. It's been so cold."

Ursula stifled a snort of laughter. "I wager you have been close to a fire. You have the look of a woman who has finally figured out what all the fuss is about."

Mary tsk-tsked in disapproval. "For shame, Lady Misseldon. We are in a holy place."

"Why Ursula, I am sure I do not know what you speak of," Elizabeth whispered. A lopsided smile played across her face. Each night with her husband, each climax, and she only wanted more. The hunger nursed itself, so that satisfaction only provoked more desire.

Henry leaned in towards Jane and hissed loudly enough so the ladies behind could hear. "Madame, get control of your women!"

Jane threw a scolding glare over her shoulder, and Elizabeth and Mary sank down in a sheepish curtsy. Ursula could not resist another tap on Elizabeth's shoulder.

"Who would have thought, Lord Cromwell? Ah well, the best ones are always the men you least suspect."

Later that night, Elizabeth tried to settle in front of the fire with a book and a cup of mulled wine. But her thoughts would not slow down enough to allow her to read, so she shut the book with a decided thump. Cromwell had absolutely forbidden her to see Aske, as much as told her not to even think about him. But her kind friend was all she thought about this Christmas. No, more than a friend. A better father figure to her than John Seymour had ever been.

"Hand it over." Cromwell breezed past her without so much as a "Happy Christmas."

No sense in feigning ignorance. Sighing, she pulled out the piece of paper that Mary had slipped to her. He snapped it out of her fingers in the blink of an eye. As if its presence were not incriminating enough, Cromwell felt the need to read it aloud to her.

"Ah, it reads: 'my dear Lissie'" Cromwell looked up. "Well now Master Aske, that's not terribly proper; you are addressing a married woman. I suppose he could not bring himself to write out Lady Cromwell. But, I digress. He writes: 'I see the little girl I knew in the young woman before me. You grew up, but I wished you had not. I hope your husband is gentle to you.'" He flicked the note into the fire like a piece of rubbish.

"Thomas, you made your point. He meant no harm."

"That man means nothing but harm to me," Cromwell muttered, watching the offensive paper shrivel and die in the fire. He came over to where she sat; she anticipated a reproach, but he softened immediately. He caressed her face, and she nuzzled her cheek against his palm. "You looked beautiful tonight. But then, you always do." He tucked a strand of hair behind her ear. "Any sign yet?" he asked hopefully. Elizabeth patted her belly.

"No, still empty I think. No little one in there yet." Her monthly courses never returned after her miscarriage. She was too embarrassed to ask for the Turkish doctor for his opinion; it was the exam that mortified her, not the questions. But the subject of babies got her thinking.

"Thomas?"

"Hmm?" he stroked her hair while he thumbed through the book she had tried to read. Maybe he inspected it out of curiosity. Maybe because he believed its contents were suspect.

"There is no general pardon for the rebels, is there?"

"There never was. If Brandon had realized that the first time around and finished what needed to be done, he would not have to return and spill even greater blood."

"Well a pardon for the leaders is impossible, but surely some sort clemency for the commons?"

He tugged her ear. "Tricky, tricky," he said. "Trying to trap me into an admission that there is no pardon for any of the leaders so you and Mary Tudor can canter off and warn your beloved Master Aske."

"Thomas, you know what I meant. Surely the poor shearmen cannot—"

"Machiavelli says—"

"Oh," Elizabeth tutted. "I doubt you would cite Machiavelli if they were your own children at stake."

He knelt before her and enveloped her hands in his own. The black in his eyes cleared and the pale blue shone. "God as my witness, if those were my children in peril, then I would stand in the field, with my sword in hand, fighting against the king and all his followers. But, Lissie, those are not our children."

Tears prickled Elizabeth's eyes at the tragedy of the inevitable. "But they are still someone's children," she whispered. "I wish it did not have to be so."

To her great surprise, Cromwell agreed. "As do I," he said sadly. "But that is just the way of things. That's war. There is no right, no wrong. Only what needs to be done." He sounded resigned when he spoke, as a man who might have learned that hard way that it did no good to try to make sense of violence or apply some sort of moral accountancy to war. Machiavelli wrote, "If an injury has to be done to a man it should be so severe that his vengeance need not be feared." Suffolk's initial mercy only meant more would have to die if and when the North revolted again.

Elizabeth leaned her forehead against his. "Will you stay tonight with me?"

"Dove, you know I cannot," he sighed. "Gregory has returned from Cambridge for the holidays. I promised him I would dine with him and his cousins tonight."

Elizabeth merely nodded. So she would be sent to bed alone and aching with hunger, like a petulant child.

***

New Year's day started out well enough. Cromwell must have stolen into their bedchamber well before dawn because when Elizabeth awoke, it was to the most magnificent stole of fur she had ever seen. Still clumsy with sleep, her hands fumbled and made contact with something soft around her naked shoulders. She sat up and pulled the fur from her shoulders and excitedly inspected it, running her fingers over every detail, rubbing it against her cheek. She'd never seen a creature so remarkable and could scarcely believe one existed. The pelt bore the sorts of spots that she'd seen on the wild African beasts sometime brought to court. But where those animals were dappled with browns, golds, and black, this creature's coat was a creamy white interrupted with an intricate pattern of dark spots. She hugged the precious fur to her and grinned uncontrollably. She knew that she really ought to grow out of the frivolities of gowns and jewels, but a secret place in her heart rejoiced that she was the most fashionable woman in the kingdom. Edward would bitterly complain that it was not fitting for a lady in waiting to show up her mistress the queen, but as wife to the man second only to the king, what was she supposed to do? Dress like matronly Catherine Brandon?

Wrapped snuggly in her new furs, Elizabeth deliberately took the long route to the stableyards—where she was supposed to follow Jane and the king on a New Years hunt. She slowed her step so all the courtiers could take a nice, gaping look at what was probably the most expensive stole in England. Maybe even in Europe. As she pretended to be oblivious to jealous whispers that followed in her wake, she took stock of how she'd made out these past twelve days of Christmas. So far, she'd awoken to a set of drop black pearl earrings to match her necklace, a sapphire broach, a solid gold pomander, a shift that was more seed pearls than cloth, and a necklace of table diamonds. Smugly, Elizabeth thought, I do believe I have fared better than the queen herself.

As snowflakes danced and skated in front of her face, she ambled up behind Edward and Jane waving to the smiling crowds. Edward threw an obligatory sneer over his shoulder, presumably at her lateness. Then, he made another double take.

"Goodness, Lissie! What are you wearing? Have some propriety, some modesty for the love of God, and stop making Jane look like a miser's wife," he snapped.

"Edward, our Lissie cannot very well refuse the Lord Privy Seal's gifts. If you would like to tell him how to dress his wife, you are welcome to take it with him directly." Jane cast a lingering stare over Elizabeth's furs. Whether it was intrigue or envy, Elizabeth could not be sure.

Jane nudged Edward. "How is Father, they told me he had fallen ill."

Elizabeth piped in. "We've received no New Years greetings from him," she said dejectedly.

"I was going to tell you at a better time," Edward replied neutrally. "Father is dead."

The world stopped turning, and Elizabeth's heart skipped a beat. The crowd's applause turned into a ring in her ears that drowned everything else out. She opened her mouth, but words failed.

"Dead?" Jane managed.

Edward did not stop nodding and smiling when he answered. "Yes. Dead."

Jane blinked in rapid surprise. "But how? Why?"

"Edward, when? How could you not tell us?" Elizabeth demanded, astonished. From behind, Elizabeth could see her sister waiver from one side to the other. Well, at least if we collapse in front of everyone, we will fall into each other, Elizabeth thought.

"_Keep smiling_," Edward hissed "He died a week ago."

"A week?" Jane repeated.

"Yes a week ago!" Edward snapped with the impatience of being forced to impeach himself. Calm again, he explained: "I arranged the funeral, everything was done to honor him."

"Honor him?" Elizabeth snorted. "I wager you did."

"They should have told me. I should have been there." Jane's mouth trembled.

"I wish it could be otherwise, but it can't now," Edward tried to console them. He turned to Jane. "Your place is here. Later you can visit his mausoleum."

Elizabeth had a sharp reply at the ready, but before she could deliver it, the king breezed past her, and the applause reached a fever point, drowning out everyone one and everything that was not Henry. The king gallantly led his queen to her mount, and Elizabeth was left standing with Edward. Anne Stanhope sidled up behind her, jostling her out of the way. Elizabeth was too stunned to care.

"I presume you told them about their father," Anne asked Edward, as if Elizabeth were not even standing right there. "Are they all right?" Anne added as a disinterested afterthought.

Edward rolled his eyes. "Of course, she's the queen."

Without realizing it, Elizabeth's feet carried her backwards, away from the glittering royal couple and adoring crowd. Away from those cold fishes, Edward and Anne. She offered no excuse and begged on one's pardon for abruptly leaving the hunting party. She turned back on her heel and ran back to her rooms, where she would not have to keep smiling for Edward. Once in her room, she bolted the door behind her. With a flying leap, she flung herself on the bed and sobbed into the priceless fur that had made her feel impenetrable less than an hour before.

Elizabeth pulled the fur from around her shoulders so she could clutch it, like she used to hug her dolls to her. She'd never been close to her father, but less so after the scandal broke with Edward's first wife. Yet, with loss of her mother, her father, and siblings who were so young that they'd faded into hazy memories, Elizabeth sensed an unnerving vulnerability. As she lay alone in her bed, she felt a great fragility at being an official orphan. Now Edward would be head of the Seymour clan not only in action, but in name as well. She could not say she liked that.

***

Cromwell thought that if this day was any indication of what the rest year held for him, then it would bring him even greater riches and power than the past wild year, which took down the Boleyns, made him a lord, and married him within a hairsbreadth of the throne. The first thing he had awoken to that morning was the sight of Elizabeth's naked shoulders facing him. He'd slipped a magnificent stole around her ivory back, so she would wake up to his New Year's gift and know that he had been there. She'd stirred and made a little squeaking noise that made him love her even more, if that was possible. Who knew how much farther he might rise in the coming year? Knight of the Garter? Perhaps even an earldom? Whatever the king's deprecation of Cromwell's low birth, Henry needed him, and Henry knew it. By the end of this nascent year, Cromwell fully expected to have a new baby of his own in the cradle and become uncle to the next king of England.

Even better, the seeds he'd sewn the month prior by leaking information to Gardiner's double agent had sprouted. That hot-head Constable had taken the bait. The North was in open revolt and her legs wide open for his assault. There would be no Parliament and no whisper of a pardon now. He took the anticipated letter from one of his clerks. This news was even better than he hoped for. He scanned the dispatch; at last he would be able massacre and arrest that whole unwashed mass of rebellion.

"We've got them," he said simply. He looked around for Rich to share the joy. Cromwell smiled uncontrollably. "We've got them," he laughed. "They broke their pledges." He grinned again and gripped the shoulders of the clerk who brought him the good news. He would finally be able to deliver the leaders of the rebellion to Henry, with halters around their necks. And Henry would reward him again. And again. Finally, Aske would be finished and his treachery laid bare for all, but most especially Elizabeth, to see.

It was all he could do to walk, not run, to the king's receiving chamber. "I'm in to see the king!" he called out joyfully. "We shall impose martial law on the whole of the North!" he roared like a battle cry.

***

"It's all over for them," Elizabeth sighed. She blotted away the tears with her silk sleeve. "Suffolk leaves tomorrow to lure Master Aske and Lord Darcy to London. Aske trusts Suffolk, he will believe whatever the king or Suffolk tells him. He will ride the road to London straight into a trap."

Jane's lips set and tightened. "We could warn him off," she said quietly.

At first Elizabeth refused to believe what she had just heard. Surely, she was mistaken? The queen was not suggesting…

"We could get word to Master Aske," Jane said again, just in case Elizabeth had misunderstood.

"Jane, you are not thinking well. You're distraught from Father's death."

"No, I am perfectly well. I have never thought so clearly in my life. I am tired of holding my tongue. I am tired of sacrificing my conscience for peace, of sacrificing my conscience for my husband who takes up other women under my nose. Who threatens me with the fate of Anne Boleyn while we lay together at night."

Elizabeth looked down at her hands as Robert Aske and Thomas Cromwell ripped her heart in half. She'd told Cromwell she loved him, and she'd meant it. But Cromwell would not allow her to love anyone else; he would never trust her love until he was the last man alive on earth. She did not want to shatter the fragile connection they'd built. Even now, she yearned to feel his narrow hips between her thighs again. But she could not bear the thought of Robert Aske walking into the sprung trap that she herself knew had been laid for him.

Elizabeth's hand trembled, the quill hovering fatefully over the parchment. "Jane, if we are found out," Elizabeth began. Jane held up her hand.

"The notion was mine. The blame is mine alone."

"But the writing is mine, the seal is mine," Elizabeth reiterated. "But, but if we do nothing…"

"We will live out the rest of our days, wondering how many we might have spared, wondering if it might have been any different," Jane finished.

Elizabeth's quaking fingers inadvertently caused the point of the quill to rain spatters of ink on the blank paper. "Christ help us, Jane. This is treason."

Jane flew at her and dug her fingers into Elizabeth's shoulder. "This is not treason, Lissie! We are loyal, faithful subjects. We are trying to protect the peace and tranquility of this realm. If they take Robert Aske, the whole of the North will never forgive the king. They will open their borders to the Scots and march until they are outside the gates of London. Master Aske can calm the discontent in Yorkshire better than the point of Suffolk's spears."

"My husband, he will find us out. He will kill us," Elizabeth mumbled. Jane shook her shoulders again.

"Lissie! Thomas Cromwell is not God! He does not see all. He does not know all. Much as he would like to believe otherwise." Jane stepped away from her and smoothed back a few strands of hair. "If you want no part of this, then you could draft the words, I could copy them and send it myself."

"No!" Elizabeth said fiercely. "I will not allow you to put your head on the block like that. If it is to be done, it is my doing as well. Let us just finish the business before our heads overpower our stomachs." She jammed the quill into the ink well. Without bothering to tap off any of the excess black liquid, she quickly wrote:

_Beloved Master Aske_

_Do not believe any of them. King and minister lie as they breathe. Do not allow yourself to return to London. Destroy this letter immediately._

"What does it say?" Jane asked.

"Does it matter?" Elizabeth sprinkled the sand over the ink. As if to absolve her sister of sole responsibility, Jane melted the sealing wax as Elizabeth folded the letter and stamped the great Northern seal on the wax. Elizabeth snatched up the letter before either of them could change their minds.

"How will you get it to him?" Jane asked.

"There's always a way," Elizabeth shrugged. Cromwell's spies always found a way. Why should the Seymour girls not discover a path to treason as well? Elizabeth turned, hesitating at the door separating Jane's bedchamber from her more private rooms. She took a deep breath and squared her shoulders, a dancer waiting for her cue. Jane nodded her assent, and Elizabeth gracefully flowed into the stream of bustling courtiers. She fell in step with the mass, no destination, no person in mind. As fate would have it, the traffic drifted by Charles Brandon, looking haunted and doleful.

"Your Grace, are you dispatched North?" she asked sweetly. He narrowed his eyes at her in suspicion. She rarely spoke to him, rarely acknowledged him.

"Your husband keeps you well informed. Yes, Lord Cromwell and the king have commanded me North."

"May we walk and talk?" A flicker of doubt in her eyes must have told him something was afoot. He gestured that she should lead the way. Elizabeth's eyes flickered about for a moment, on the search for anyone who appeared to display an inordinate interest in her conversation with Brandon. Her eyes made too brief a sweep of the room, because they missed Jane Boleyn's hungry stare.

"Please do not look at me, just stare straight ahead," Elizabeth whispered. "I need to help a friend. Do you think you could send a letter ahead of you on the way to York?"

"I think we understand each other." Brandon smiled and nodded, waved to an old jousting friend.

Elizabeth stepped in closer to him so their fur trimmed sleeves touched. She prayed no one could see the small piece of paper pass between fur on fur.

"Please do not look at the letter, forget you ever saw it."

"I will," Brandon nodded. "For I believe that your friend may be my friend as well." As they neared a corner, Brandon veered sharply to the right while Elizabeth rejoined the general flow of courtiers milling in between the great hall and the presence chamber. Elizabeth's back was turned as Lady Rochford fell in step behind Brandon at a discrete distance. Her narrow eyes followed the train of custody of the curious scrap of paper as Brandon handed it off to Gardiner. The bishop did not bother to look at the paper but folded it into his purple robes. Rochford passed Gardiner as if she paid him no mind, but she ducked into an alcove as soon as she could. How peculiar she thought, that Bishop Gardiner would then pass this little secret on to a man who seemed very familiar to Gardiner, but wore Lord Cromwell's livery.

***

The sleet drove into the window sideways, clattering and clacking like hooves on cobblestone. So when Jane Boleyn strode into Cromwell's empty offices, he did not register the click of her heels. Only her overstrong, oversweet perfume signaled her presence.

"What do you want, Rochford?" Cromwell grumbled without even looking up from his statute.

"I want to help you."

Cromwell snorted. "You already have."

"Yes, yes for which I have been so richly rewarded with neglect and penury. But I am here to save you from false friends."

"Lady Rochford, I have no friends."

"Not even your wife?"

At that, Cromwell looked up and sat back in his chair. "You are on dangerous ground, Jane Boleyn."

"Not as dangerous as the ground beneath others' shoes." She pulled out the folded letter, almost dwarfed by the size of the great, proud seal. Cromwell recognized it on sight. He had seen it once before while rifling through Elizabeth's chest of personal mementos, and his mind had a knack for remembering exactly whatever it saw, however fleeting. He dug his nails into the arms of his chair. That snake Jane Boleyn had intercepted a love letter from his Lissie to another man. That must be it. Who was it? Tom Wyatt? Francis Bryan? God forbid, that rake Charles Brandon?

"How did you get it?" Cromwell dared ask. He did not truly care. He was too busy deciding if he would strangle Elizabeth or shut her up in a French convent.

Lady Rochford rubber her fingers together. "I pick-pocketed one of your men. Who is not really one of your men underneath his livery coat."

Gardiner's agent carrying his wife's love letters? For a moment, it almost did not make sense, but then Cromwell remembered that in the court of King Henry, common sense and decency did not apply. He decided not to make the man's death look like an accident. Let Gardiner come upon the sight of spilled black entrails and wonder what sort of low man was capable of such a deed.

"Lady Rochford, how much will it take for you to give me the letter and forget we ever had this conversation?"

"I want my pension as viscontess fully restored to me. I want part of the Boleyn lands when old Thomas shoves off," she spoke rapidly, as one who had been preparing the calculation for some time.

"Fair enough." In his mind, he crossed his fingers about the part of returning Boleyn lands to the woman who help kill off the heirs in the first place. "To prove I am in earnest, here is a note for £100."

For her part, she tossed the tiny letter with the great seal on his desk. It landed with an irreverent thud on a stack of papers. She lingered, perhaps hoping that he might open the letter in front of her, so that she too could peruse whatever filthy verse Elizabeth's lovers sent her. Cromwell would sooner blind himself than give Jane Boleyn that privilege. She took the hint in the form of a dismissive wave and a black look.

Briefly, Cromwell wondered if he should just throw the letter into his fire, so he would never have to read the proof that Elizabeth loved others above him. If he destroyed the evidence, would the betrayal still exist? Of course it would. He held the requisite proof in his hands that his dove was a liar, a trained harlot who probably whispered, "I love you," to many men on many different pillows. He should have listened to Edward: nothing could make him loveable. It was a farce to think that a woman like Elizabeth would love a man like him, and almost twice her age no less.

He started to burn the letter over the candle, but the fruit of the poison tree proved too alluring. He pulled it back from the flame, dipping the paper into wine where it had caught on fire. With one hand on his dagger, he broke the seal with his free hand to read of the man who bedded his wife while Cromwell labored over sub-clauses and bullied Parliament into submission. Before his eyes could attach words to their meanings, he immediately recognized Elizabeth's writing. The large, confident lettering and big, loopy "y's". Then, his eyes snapped into focus on the words themselves.

_Beloved Master Aske_

_Do not believe any of them. King and minister lie as they breathe. Do not allow yourself to return to London. Destroy this letter immediately._

A strangled cry escaped Cromwell, and he clamped his hand over his mouth to stop another from escaping. He might have survived if it was a request for a sweaty thump from Francis Bryan. But this would kill Cromwell, stop his heart cold in its tracks. In four sentences, Elizabeth had said a world full of truth. She had impugned her king. She had denounced her own husband as a lying serpent. For Christ's sake, she had aided and abetted a traitor. But worst of all, at the top of the letter, she had made it very clear who she loved and who she did not. Robert Aske was beloved in her eyes, not her liar of a husband. But I never lied to you, Lissie, he thought.

Something dripped on the paper, and Cromwell realized it was a tear. Hurriedly, he wiped his cheeks. He drained a glass of unwatered wine to restore the color to his face. God forbid someone walk in here and see the Lord Privy Seal pale and teary eyed. His heart burned and he clutched at his chest. He drank another glass of wine to cool his burning, but his body rejected the liquid, shivering uncontrollably. At length, he managed to push himself to standing and make his way to the fire place. Once there, he violently retched on the kindling.

"Thomas?"

Oh God, he thought, of all people to chance by, why must it be Richard Rich?

"My God, Thomas, are you all right?" Richard asked.

If Cromwell had any fight left in him, he would have thrown something at Richard's bulbous forehead and asked, Do I look all right to you?

"I'm well enough," Cromwell said faintly.

Rich circled around to Cromwell's side. "Thomas, you are not well. We should call a physician. Look at you."

Distantly, Cromwell reached up to his face and realized a sheen of sweat misted his skin.

"You are not well," Rich repeated. "Thomas, it could be the sweat." As a precaution, Rich took a step backwards.

"No, Richard. I just need to rest. I need my bed."

Rich nodded dubiously, but still backed away, fearful of the sweat vapors.

"Oh, and Richard, when you chance by Edward Seymour next, tell him to see me first thing tomorrow morning," Cromwell called over his shoulder. He limped through the palaces back doors and secret galleries, unwilling to let anyone see Thomas Cromwell slumped over like a wounded animal. Once he made it back to his private rooms, he immediately regretted coming there. Elizabeth was everywhere. Various articles of clothing were strewn over chairs. Discarded gowns lay on the bed where she must have tried them on, then decided against them. A few unfinished needle point patterns rested on the window seat. Worst, the beautiful furs he'd given her for New Years sat on her side of the bed, looking out onto Cromwell's marital tragedy.

Rashly, he thought about throwing the fur on the fire, or poring ink over it. Maybe take his dagger to it, while he waited for Elizabeth to show her face in here. He realized his hand had never left his dagger. Now, he squeezed it for reassurance. A crime of passion, they called it.

When he first started out as a lawyer for the commons, sobbing men sometimes came to him, begging for help. They cried that they had killed their wives, that they had not meant to, but oh God, oh God, they loved her so much, so, so much. They used to burrow their heads into his woolen jacket, tears and noses running, sobbing, "Please sir, help me sir. I loved her so much, I just loved her so much." Not much a lawyer could do in that instance except pat the man on the back and hand him some money with which to pay the hangman.

Cromwell shook his head. This was dangerous thinking born out of passion that had been jilted by treason. I should call Richard or Ralph to me, he thought. Tell them to tie this Odysseus to masts and save him from himself. He could not stand another moment surrounded by the wreckage of all the presents he'd given Elizabeth. Could not bear to look at the bed in which they'd made love only the night prior. He relocated to his private study to take refuge in the familiar smell of worn books. He told himself to toss the dagger away, but his hand remained fixed to it with a will of its own.

***

Jane snapped her fingers at Elizabeth as she breezed past. "Lissie, I am unwell. Come see me to my bed." Jane did not even glance over her shoulder. Elizabeth shared a puzzled look with Mary, who shrugged and offered to take her embroidery. Elizabeth scrambled out of her chair, chasing after the hem of Jane's gown.

As soon as the door bolted shut, Jane rounded on her. The pink had drained out of her bronzed cheeks, leaving the skin jaundiced and leathery.

"Robert Aske has been arrested," Jane said simply.

"What? How?" Elizabeth gasped.

"Keep your voice down, for God's sake! How? Because our letter never reached him. Because it was intercepted at some point along the road to Pontefract. Or the old fool had the letter on his person when he was taken up."

"We don't know that," Elizabeth said quickly. "Perhaps it was lost. Or perhaps it reached Aske, but he did not read it and tossed it into the fire."

" Do you honestly think that if a letter bearing your old seal and clearly in your writing landed in Aske's hands, that he would just toss it to the wind and disregard it?"

Elizabeth's legs went numb and gave way. She sank to the floor, her head in her hands. "Oh God," she whispered. "Oh, God. We are finished."

Jane blinked back a few stunned tears before collapsing in a heap. "The king. Cromwell. They will kill us. They will hang us with Aske and Constable."

As if remembering her occupation as chief lady in waiting, Elizabeth collected herself enough to loop her arms through Jane's elbows and pull her to standing long enough to scoot a chair behind her.

"I am putting out word that you are violently ill. It will keep everyone out of here."

Jane looked dubious. "Then that will be even more suspicious: the two of us hiding in here while everything goes up in flames. Perhaps if we smile and dance and act as if everything is as it should be…"

"Jane, do you really want to go out there and face that music?"

Jane lowered her head, cowed. "No, no I am terrified that if I look a single person in the eye, they will know the truth." Jane peered up at Elizabeth through her hands. "Lady Mary. She should know that it is not safe for her to be in the queen's rooms anymore."

Elizabeth edged the door open enough to poke her head out. She looked over Mary's shoulder and snapped at Jane Boleyn. "Lady Rochford! The queen will not recover with you loitering outside the door. She's terribly, terribly ill. Go brew a tisane, make a posset." Elizabeth unceremoniously grabbed the slippery silk of Mary's dress and pulled her behind the door. Mary was too surprised to protest at the rough treatment. Once the door shut behind them, Mary surveyed the deadly serious faces of the queen and her sister.

"Lady Mary, matters are going to go very badly for the Seymours today. You must leave here. Go back to your house at Huntsdon. Whatever they ask you to swear against us, comply," Jane recited numbly.

"Madame, if I can make an appeal—"

"You can't," Elizabeth said harshly. "It is done. There is no returning from where we have been. Condemn us, disavow us. Forget you ever met the Seymour sisters. May God slap his mercy across our cheeks when this storm breaks."

Mary did not need an explanation. Robert Aske had been arrested hours earlier. Mary could sew the facts and chronology together for herself.

She crossed the room and threw her arms around Jane. The queen leaned back into the embrace. Mary held her tighter. "I never believed the accusations against my mother. To tell the truth, I never believed the charges against Anne Boleyn. Whatever slander is leveled against you, I know in my heart you are loyal subjects."

With a sad smile, Mary Tudor slipped out the door, leaving Jane and Elizabeth alone. Elizabeth slipped out of her seat and balled herself up alongside the fire. Jane followed suit, settling cross-legged on to the plush carpet.

"We might, we might be all right." Jane nodded, trying to convince herself. "If they knew…someone would have come for us by now, wouldn't they?"

"Maybe, maybe not," Elizabeth held her hands against the fire, but her fingers felt like icicles and would not stop trembling.

"How was it? When they came for Anne. Did she know?" Jane pulled her knees into her chest and rested her head on them.

"I was not there, remember? I was with you at Chelsea when they arrested Anne. Madge Shelton later told me Suffolk just came in with the Tower guards, told her she was arrested on suspicion of treason."

"See," Jane insisted. "We are all right. They would have come for us by now."

"No, Cromwell had arrested George Boleyn before Anne even knew. If they come for us, we will be the last to know of it."

" No one knows. We are safe. What would Suffolk gain by turning as a false witness? Admit he carried the letter? Bring down himself and the queen he helped crown?"

A solitary tear snaked down Elizabeth's face. She eased onto her side and rested her head against Jane's leg. It was all over for the Seymours. The journey to the block took Anne Boleyn over six years; it had taken the Seymour girls as many months. The only thing that might, _might_, spare their lives, or at least stay the sentence, was the possibility that either of them could be pregnant. And, did their husbands not love them? Henry was still in love with Jane, wasn't he? But, six months after the wedding and Jane did not have a budding belly to show for it. No, Henry's capricious mercy would not save them. Cromwell? He exacted such a high price of love and loyalty on the best of days when their loves intersected and intertwined. She knew his heart would break if that letter ever saw the light of day. He might very well strangle her with his own hands once her betrayal was discovered.

My family, my marriage, will not survive this, Elizabeth thought. I may not survive tonight. Elizabeth felt strangely comforted that both her mother and father were dead, that they would not have to see what their daughters had come to.

"I keep failing them," Elizabeth murmured, dreamy as she watched the fire.

"Lissie, what we did, we did with the heart of true and faithful subject," Jane stroked her hair. "Wait, failed who?"

"I don't know why, but I just keep failing my husband. I can't love him enough, I cannot be loyal enough. And I failed dear Master Aske. I tried to keep him safe, and I failed. I have failed our family. We are all ruined if we live long enough to see our actual ruin. I failed you, and I am sorry, Jane."

Jane folded herself over Elizabeth. "You have failed no one, least of all me." She planted a kiss on Elizabeth's head, trying to comfort her sister, but Elizabeth could feel the wet of Jane's tears on her scalp.

***

Midnight came and went, yet Elizabeth stayed away. Cromwell wondered if she was claiming some sort of sanctuary in the queen's rooms. Which was laughable, because who better than him had proved that a queen could have no sanctuary, least of all in her private rooms? The letter stared up at him from his desk. In his mind's eye, he could see Elizabeth and the queen with their golden heads together, cooperating at treason. Did the queen dictate while Elizabeth wrote? That Jane knew was a foregone conclusion in Cromwell's mind; those two were thick as thieves, close as only sisters can be. I have enough to bring down the Seymours and their illiterate, Catholic queen, so why do I hesitate, Cromwell asked himself. Jane's position weakened every month that left her womb empty. He knew Henry was beginning to get impatient. If Cromwell struck now, he could cut a wide swath through the conservative faction. The Seymours could be in the Tower by noon depending on the sort of momentum he could attract.

What about Elizabeth? He wanted to strangle her with his bare hands, feel her panicked pulse beneath his hands. Yet at the same time, the thought of losing her wrenched his chest in two. What did it matter? He had already lost her, if he'd even had her at all. He decided to wait for her to come to him. In the meantime, he pulled his dagger from its sheath. Spreading his hand flat, palm down on the table, he played an old army game. You had to touch the dagger down in between the spaces of your fingers as fast as you could. Naturally, the man who stabbed himself the least, and was the fastest, won. Tonight, he was fast enough with his knife and didn't much care when the blade pierced his skin.


	14. Chapter 14

Two hours past midnight, Jane and Elizabeth sat on the floor, folded over one another. They watched the fire in a numb trance, a twilight between sleep and wakefulness.

"You should go back to your rooms," Jane said over the crackle of the fire. "The longer you hide in here, the worse it will look. Besides, Lord Cromwell never sleeps, so he probably is not even there."

"I should stay with you," Elizabeth replied determinedly. "Just in case—"

"In case the Tower guard comes for me? And what would you do, little Lissie? How would you protect me?"

"Edward is head of our family now. He would speak up for us."

Jane did not answer. She just twisted Elizabeth's strawberry blonde hair around her fingers. Between them was the unsayable fact that neither sister trusted her brother. Cromwell had told her that he would defy king and country if their children were at risk. Now, as the scaffold loomed over Elizabeth's horizon, she had to wonder if he would protect her as he often promised. Or if the volatility of desire, betrayal, and desperation would lead him to devour her himself.

"Lissie, you need to go back to your own rooms," Jane said smoothly, but firmly. "How will we explain why we have been cloistered away?"

Elizabeth stood, shaking the wrinkles out of her skirts. She took Jane's hand in her own and squeezed it hard, as if to give herself strength. Jane stared up with pleading eyes; another one of Henry's frightened queens would have to face the uncertain night alone, a pensive vigil before the fire place.

"I will come to your rooms as soon as I am able tomorrow," Elizabeth said firmly. "If I do not…" Her voice trailed off. "Well, if I do not, you know the cause of it."

Elizabeth navigated her way back to her rooms through the series of secret galleries and passageways; she was too afraid that she might be seen on one of the main stairwells and arrested on sight. As she turned the key to hidden door that led directly in to her bedchamber, she opened the door as slowly and quietly as she could. Once she edged it open enough, she furtively peeked her head around to survey the fight in store for her. On initial glance, the room appeared exactly as she left it that morning. All the gowns that she had tried, and decided not to wear, lay exactly where she tossed them. Her new fur stole rested on the bed, curled up so it looked like a live animal coiled for the strike. Cautiously, she eased herself inside the room, still alert for an ambush. Only when she was sure that Cromwell was not lurking somewhere, behind a bedpost or obscured by a tapestry, she closed and locked the door behind her.

She breathed a sigh of relief to see that nothing indicated her husband had even returned to their rooms that night. Which, of course did not foreclose the fact that he might be bent over his desk in his offices, drawing up the charges of treason against the queen and her sister. The relief soon flooded out of her and dread sank into her chest as she took a closer look at the room. As her eyes adjusted to the dim light, Elizabeth realized that the gowns she'd left strewn about had actually been shredded, as if someone had run a jagged knife through the fabric. She crossed the room and gasped as the pads of her fingers ran over the ripped silk. She caught a flurry of white out of the corner of her eye. At first sight, she thought that snow must have escaped through the window and landed on her bed. When she approached the mattress, she saw the sprinkling of down feathers where her pillow had been eviscerated. In bleak amusement, she observed that even in his passionate rage, that magpie, Cromwell, had left the priceless furs untouched. She poked her fingers in the holes that were gouged into the mattress on her side of the bed. Bile lodged in the back of her throat.

He will kill me tonight, she thought. I will never see the inside of the Tower because he will kill me himself tonight, she realized. He will throw my body in the Thames or make his lackey, Richard Rich, dig a shallow grave. I will never see my family again, and my kin will not even have the decency of a corpse to bury. She shoved her hand in her mouth to stop herself from crying for help. If she was quiet, she might be able to tip-toe out the way she came.

"Elizabeth."

The sound of her name on Cromwell's lips made her chest speed up; her heart pounded so fiercely she feared it would crush her ribs. The voice drifted into the bedchamber from his study down the hall. He knew she was here, and there was no going back. She demurely folded her hands together, so the long French sleeves hid them completely. So he would not see her hands shake and sniff out her fear.

Elizabeth drew in a ragged breath, and pushed open the usually locked door to his study. He sat with his back to her, playing himself at cards.

"What's kept you?" he asked disinterestedly. He deftly flipped the cards, chided at the hand he had dealt himself, then reshuffled the deck.

"Her Majesty was ill. I sat up late with her." Elizabeth could barely form the words, her lips were so numb with dread. By the dying light of the fire, the jewels on Cromwell's dagger sparkled sinisterly from where it lay on the desk. Next to the pack of cards, her letter to Robert Aske bearing the seal of her first husband, rested as if it were just another of Cromwell's dispatches.

His head drooped. "I loved you. Like a fool, I believed you when you told me that you loved me. I had begun to trust you," he said softly. Elizabeth's stomach sickened at the past-tense. After tonight, she would be no more to him, a thing that was, but no longer existed.

She dared a few steps toward him. "I do love you. And, you have no reason not to place your trust in me." She was talking for her life, and she was not above blaming that letter on someone else. Anyone else. As usual, she had said exactly the wrong thing to Cromwell, because he vaulted from his chair, flinging it to one side like a bundle of sticks. In a single fluid motion, he snatched up the letter, his dagger, and closed in on her. On instinct, she dropped to her knees.

"For pity's sake, Thomas. Don't kill me," she gasped. The cool sharp blade settled against her neck, where her pulse pounded.

"Why should I waste money on a trial when you are a liar and a whore of the worst sort?" he snarled. He pushed the blade against her neck, breaking the first delicate layers. A small tear of blood snaked down her neck.

"For the love of Christ, Thomas! Don't kill me. Please. I'm pregnant," she panted. Elizabeth decided she would say or do anything to not have to die this night. She would make another dark pact with herself, like the one she made when Cromwell hauled her in for questioning about Anne Boleyn.

"You lie," he growled, intuitively suspicious about the convenient timing of this new life. He pressed the blade to her neck again. Her hands flew out, and she gripped his sleeves.

"Thomas, please. I'm pregnant. I swear. Have mercy," she pleaded. Elizabeth told herself that she was not telling an outright lie; she did not _not _know if she was pregnant. At least the idea would buy her time. And her conviction must have sparked some doubt in Cromwell, because he took a step back from her. Elizabeth remained prostrate on her knees, and from her eyeline, she saw him tuck the dagger into his belt. But, she did not dare rise.

"I can explain everything," she mumbled.

He gripped her bodice and roughly hauled her to standing. "Explain! What is there to explain?" he shouted, his face only an inch from hers. He shook her violently. "Have I not loved you? Have I not been a good husband to you? I mean only to please you, yet you repay me with this? You would stretch your neck for the sake of a mutton reeking ingrate—but when I offer you my heart, you throw it beneath your horse's hooves. Explain that to me! You would serve Robert Aske above your own husband. Explain that. You love others above me when you are my everything. I should snap your neck here and now, but you are still alive. Explain that to me."

She tried to keep her voice low and soothing. "Thomas, I only meant to help a friend. It is no collusion with traitors, just a piece of advice." Desperately, she tried to remember what exactly she wrote. She took his angular jaw in one hand, while the traced his ear lobe—a gesture that usually soothed him. But then, she had never seen him like this. He slapped her hands away, but continued to crush her to him.

"Thomas, for God's sake! What, you think that if I hold others dear, then I necessarily love you less?"

"Yes!" he shouted. Dripping sweat and tears, he looked like man who was no longer concerned with rationality or reasonability. He looked like a man who was capable of anything. "By the blood of Christ, why can you not be mine, completely mine? I knew I had to share you with your friends, your brothers and sister. But you expect me to resign myself to sharing your heart with traitorous villains?"

"Thomas, please," she whispered. There was no pulling him back from the dark abyss he was sliding towards. Terrified, Elizabeth realized that the treasonous implications of her message to Aske were not the real cause of Cromwell's vicious rage. No, the real reason she'd had a knife at her throat was because his obsessive love would rather see her dead than love anyone else besides Cromwell.

He throttled her like a rag-doll. "Oh, don't bat your eyes and whimper, 'Thomas,' at me. Shall I show your own stupid, loopy writing? Shall I point to where you observed that, 'king and minister lie as they breathe'? You have besmirched your king and your husband. I could drown you in one of the garden fountains, and every man at court would call it justice well done!" His hands relaxed their grip on the slippery silk of her dress. He almost released her, only to pull her into his arms again.

"And yet," he groaned. "And, yet I love you. I want to strangle you, but I want to make love to you. I want to see your blood running off the scaffold, but then I want you to bear my children. I hate you for making me fall in love with you in the first place." He tried to kiss her full on the lips, but she ducked. Undeterred, he pressed his lips to every inch of her skin that he could get to.

Elizabeth squirmed in his violent embrace. She had not fully realized how frighteningly strong Cromwell was until now. He still had the sinewy, lethal strength of a hardened soldier hidden under the sober robes of a lawyer. Still, she managed to free an arm. Disgusted by the hardening between his legs at a time such as this, Elizabeth slapped her husband hard across the jaw. Even though the slap thundered across the room, even though she braced herself for an even harder blow in return, Cromwell did not so much as glance up. Instead, he suckled along her neck.

"I need to feel your skin against mine," he whispered, his lips brushing her flesh. "I need to make love to you, to know that I haven't lost you. I need to know you are still my dove." With the force of his weight, he tried to pull them both to the floor, but Elizabeth defiantly steadied her balance. It made little difference, because he kicked her feet out feet out from underneath her. They crashed to the floor together, with Elizabeth taking most of the blow. The sharp crack to the back of her head left her dazed for a few moments. When she recovered some sense of self and place, she slapped Cromwell again for trying to make love to her while she was on trial for her life. The blows bounced off his cheek with little notice, and he made no effort to restrain her hands.

"God damn it, Elizabeth," he whispered into her hair. "Why did you have to go and do a thing like this? Why will you not let yourself be happy with me?"

She had no answer for him; it was more than she knew herself. Their limbs entangled one another as he hiked her skirts over her knees, while she slapped him again with one hand and untied his laces with the other. As she lay there, waiting for him to take her, she thought that perhaps they were not meant for happiness, that they could never conjure up the sweet simplicity of other marriages. Sharp desire and razor-like jealousy would just return again to snuff out whatever fragile connections they made. Now, as they cooperated in what Elizabeth imagined to be the saddest act ever committed between a man and a woman, a great ocean sprang up between them in spite of their joined bodies. It was such a distance that she had no idea how they could ever bridge it.

Cromwell rolled off of her, panting and wiping his face with the back of his sleeve. The only parts of them touching were the backs of their hands, resting indifferently against each other.

"At dawn, I am sending for the physician, and we will see if you are lying to me about being with child. God help us both if you are lying to me about that," he said. He pulled himself to standing and offered her his hand. She merely rolled over on her side in response. Apparently too tired to rebuke her, he sighed and laced up his breeches.

"I am placing you under house arrest in our rooms while I investigate this matter further. You will not leave here, will not send or receive messages, will see no one—except your maids and myself. Until I decide otherwise." He spoke in a distracted, business-like tone while he straightened his robes.

"Thomas, you can't do that." She sat up on her elbows. "You can't just make me disappear for a spell, with no explanation."

"Oh, I think you will find that I can," he replied coolly. He gazed down at her, his large eyes the only thing that broke up the impermeable blackness of his outline.

"This is not love, Thomas." She shook her head. "This is not love."

He narrowed his eyes at her. "How would you know? How would you even begin to know?"

Elizabeth burrowed her cheek against the Persian rug, while Cromwell reseated himself at the table to resume his hand of cards. They waited for the dawn together, but in complete silence.

Cromwell was not at all surprised to learn that Edward had completely disregarded his summons.

Rich shrugged, as if to apologize on Edward's behalf. "Our Viscount Beauchamp sent word that he would be hunting with the king, and he will not be able to see you until mid-morning."

"I'm not a vain creature; I am not above going to see him myself." Cromwell felt through his pocket and traced the outline of the damning letter.

"If you were really determined, I'm sure you could find him at the stables, seeing to his horses." Rich looked askance at him. "Thomas, are you sure you're well? You seem…unhinged."

Cromwell wiped his hands over his face that was peppered with the stubble of a missed shave. He rubbed his eyes, bleary and red-rimmed from lack of sleep. "I'm perfectly fine, Richard," he mumbled. He didn't need to Rich to believe him, he just needed Rich to stop asking.

"I'm off to see Edward Seymour. Start drawing up bills of attainder for Aske, Darcy, and Constable," he said. Rich looked at him questioningly. "Oh, stop staring at me like that Richard, I'm perfectly fine," Cromwell repeated. He brushed past Rich without another word of explanation. As he rounded the corner out of his offices, he nearly walked right into his son, Gregory, who was just approaching as he was leaving.

"Well, I'm here to present myself to the queen's sister," Gregory said impatiently without so much as a "Good Morning." Gregory crossed his arms and tried to set his face into a scowl. However, Cromwell observed that Gregory had his mother's mild, kind eyes, and therefore he could seem no more imposing than a lamb. Unlike his father, who could send the most cynical courtiers running with a hard stare and a raised eyebrow.

Cromwell wiped at his face again, wishing he had sent for his barber that morning. "Gregory, now is not the time. Elizabeth is….indisposed. And I am very busy."

"You are always very busy," Gregory shot back. His soft voice belied the harsh resentment behind the words. "You were always very busy. God only knows how Grace and Anne knew you were their father. Mother probably had to remind them. Perhaps you should have just moved in with Cardinal Wolsey and saved us all the confusion of who was this man who occasionally ate supper with us."

Cromwell flinched under his son's merciless judgment. If another man said the things to him that Gregory did, Cromwell would smash his teeth out. But for the longest time, Gregory and his infrequent letters was all Cromwell had. So, he bore Gregory's emotional lashings without so much as sharp look.

"Anyway, what do you mean she is indisposed?" Gregory continued conversationally. " Is she so ill that she cannot shake hands? Your new family won't have a very strong constitution if the mother cannot even sustain so much as a 'how do you do.'"

"Gregory," Cromwell began slowly, patiently. "You have been in London for weeks. You have had weeks to present yourself to her. You can hardly fault Elizabeth or myself for not waiting with baited breath for you to make an appearance at court." He tried to step past Gregory, but his son directly matched his step and blocked him as if they were pairing up for a dance.

"What is she, a year or two older than me? Can I just call her Lady Cromwell, instead of Step-mother?" Gregory said mildly. It always surprised Cromwell that a boy with such a sweet face could spew such harsh words.

"Gregory, shouldn't you be back at Cambridge, attending to your studies? " Cromwell sighed. "Come back to London for Easter: you can flagellate me then. But right now, I am very busy earning the salary that pays for your schooling." He pressed his palm flat against Gregory's rib cage and gently, but firmly, moved Gregory to the side.

"Well, who am I to slow you from your daily collection of bribes? God knows your wife's gowns and jewels do not pay for themselves."

" 'Bribe' is naughty word: we call them gratuities around here. And you have it all wrong. I use them to pay for all of my gambling and debauchery." He breezed past his son without a backward glance. That was enough of Gregory until Easter.

Once in the stables, Cromwell waved away the grooms that were saddling Edward's hunter. He scratched the horse's jaw and tried to imagine ways to tie the treacherous letter to Edward instead of Elizabeth. He wondered if Henry was out of love with Jane even just a little bit--perhaps enough to warrant her disposal? A treacherous, Catholic queen without an heir in her belly was worse than useless.

"Why good morning, my Lord Cromwell! Shall you be hunting with us this morning?" The overly boisterous voice of Tom Seymour at such an early hour snapped Cromwell out of his scheming.

"Good morning, Master Seymour," he replied coolly. "No, I shall not be joining you. Someone has to stay behind and run the Commonwealth while the king hunts."

"I suppose that's why everyone calls you 'the other king.'" Tom Seymour smiled, completely oblivious to Cromwell's narrowed eyes.

"Tom, I wouldn't go around repeating that if I were you. I am only the king's servant."

"The king's _richest _servant," Tom qualified. "Anyway, happy tidings finding you here. I've been meaning to ask you. The thing is, as the queen's brother, with my brother holding the title of viscount, I was thinking it was time I have a title. I don't mean to be an earl, or anything. Maybe a baron, though?"

Cromwell stared incredulously at Tom. In his pocket was a letter that could make a short, bloody end of the whole Seymour family, yet here was Tom Seymour asking to be made a lord.

"Master Seymour, have you somehow distinguished yourself in royal service recently? Some way that I have not noticed?" On another morning, Cromwell might have laughed.

Undaunted, Tom babbled on. "Well, then there is the small matter that my sister is your wife, and you show generous patronage to your associates."

Not for the first time, Cromwell wished that Elizabeth had been an only child. He started to unsaddle Edward's hunter. Brother Edward would not be going anywhere today.

"Wait, what are you doing?" Tom exclaimed. "Edward is supposed to hunt with the king."

"I need your brother here with me today. Run along, Master Seymour, and check that the hounds are ready." At Tom's crestfallen face, he relented a bit. "And, I shall see if I cannot cobble together a knighthood for you."

As Tom pattered away, his frantic steps were replaced by Edward's slower, heavier pace.

"Master Cromwell, you are either sabotaging my saddle in the hopes I break my neck this morning, or you do not mean me to go hunting at all?"

"Edward, why would I wait for chance to break your neck when I could just take your head clean off?" Cromwell turned slowly and pulled out Elizabeth's letter. He passed it to Edward, disdainfully holding it between two fingers as if it were a filthy rag. Edward's smirk evaporated when he saw the handwriting.

"I disown them both utterly. They deserve the full punishment of the law." He said quickly. Edward stared Cromwell dead in the eyes as he offered up his sisters.

" 'They?' So, you knew the queen was involved?" Cromwell wasted no time in pouncing on Edward's words.

Edward sucked in his breath, retracing his words. "Well, Lissie's conscience is more malleable. She can be bought off easily enough—you're proof of that. But put the queen next to her and watch Lissie remember she has principles beyond dresses and dancing." Edward straightened his shoulders. "I don't suppose you have already arrested them?"

"That depends. Your sister protests to me that she is with child again."

"Christ, Cromwell. You just can't leave that field fallow, can you?" Edward snorted. "If you go after the queen, you will find that you have overreached yourself. The king does happen to love his queen. He won't allow you to lock her up."

"Correction, Edward. The king is not out of love with the queen. But, his patience is wearing thin. Eight months of marriage, and we are no closer to a child in Queen Jane's belly than when she was a maid. Your family's position is not as strong as you think. This collusion with traitors is all I need to push you all off the ledge. Don't think I cannot find another queen if I have to."

Cornered, Edward gave in. He passed the damning letter back to Cromwell. "How is this all to end? You must have some angle in mind, otherwise you would have arrested them already."

"I think to keep this letter safe and tucked away for a while. See if you and your family behave yourselves. Let us see if your family whispers behind their hands against the Reformation. Let us see if you and the queen try to obstruct me in my personal business. Maybe if the queen is soon quick with child, I will just toss this letter into the fire. Or, perhaps I won't. Every night the Seymours will rest their weary heads having lived through one day, but unsure if I will change my mind the next day and show this letter to the king."

Edward swallowed hard. "And where is Elizabeth in all of this? You haven't harmed her, have you?" he dared to ask. Cromwell arched an eyebrow at Edward's sudden interest in his sister's well-being.

"I'm pulling Elizabeth out of the queen's service and shutting her away. In her seclusion, let us hope she engages in some form of reflection, some repentance. Don't worry, Edward. She's not dead, if that is what you are asking."

"I'd like to keep all my siblings alive, if you don't mind. So what kind of tribute are you going to exact from the Seymours? How many thousands of pounds will it cost to keep the axeman away?"

Cromwell half-smiled. At least Edward thought like him, pricing out every transaction, every favor, to the exact ounce of gold. "My lord, you can keep your gold to pay your brother's gambling debts. Instead, impress me by doing the things I now find are beneath me, such as getting Constable to talk. God only knows what you'll have to resort to, in order to make a man like him name names. You have a cruel imagination, I'm sure you will figure out some way to break Constable." Cromwell shrugged. "The most effective men are not afraid of a little grime under their nails." He turned to go, leaving a crumpled Edward Seymour in his wake.

Elizabeth watched dispassionately as her maids tidied the bedroom. They whispered amongst themselves that their lady must have really made her mark with the remnants of the tantrum they now cleaned up. Why else would her husband order her shut away in her room with no books, paints, or even embroidery? Elizabeth wanted to explain to the girls that they were actually cleaning up the Lord Privy Seal's temper tantrum, that she had actually planned on wearing the gowns that Cromwell had shredded. She decided to save her breath. Cromwell's people all thought she was a spoiled brat with an eye on his fortune, and she could not imagine anything would ever change their minds. So, she let them whisper with their backs to her, while she gazed out the window at the intermittent snowflakes.

Elizabeth now thought that the trick was to survive the initial tempest of Cromwell's anger. At least last night proved that if she could make it through a vicious quarrel with him, then the worst danger was over. The only problem was that Elizabeth had no plan from here, no route that would lead her from the pregnancy she had fabricated (and would no doubt be shortly disproved) to a real plan that would save her and Jane. The most obvious way to salvage her own skin would be to completely blame Jane, say that the queen overcame her own will and good sense by ordering her loyal chief lady in waiting to write out the queen's message. But with Edward in charge since their father died, Elizabeth and Jane knew they were as good as on their own.

She snapped back into the here and now when Cromwell threw the door open. He snapped his fingers at the maids.

"All of you. Out," he barked. The kind, mysterious physician trailed after Cromwell's dark robes. Elizabeth wondered if Cromwell purposely surrounded himself with men whose origins were as obscure as his own. The young doctor smiled at her and shrugged apologetically, as if to say, here we are again, so let's get this over with quickly.

"Thomas, for dignity's sake, you're not really going to stay in the room are you? I mean, while he examines me?" she asked.

"I don't trust you not to bribe the doctor to lie on your behalf. Lissie, I find I don't trust you at all," he said. He waved the doctor forward to Elizabeth, but caught his elbow so he could whisper something in Italian in the physician's ear. Cromwell crossed his arms and leaned into the wall, his eyes not leaving Elizabeth's face for a moment.

She gazed up at the carved ceiling while she was poked and prodded. The doctor sat back on his heels and washed his hands.

"It's early days," he told her in French. "But you are with child. Two, maybe three, months along."

Elizabeth blinked rapidly. "_What_?" she exclaimed. In a moment of bleak amusement, she almost laughed: she imagined she was the most surprised person in the room. At least outwardly. She no longer trusted herself to know what thoughts swirled behind Cromwell's black eyes.

"Lissie, don't overwhelm yourself with joy," he said drily.

"But, but, _how_?" Elizabeth babbled. Her bleeding never returned after her miscarriage. She chided herself for not at least considering that she might be with child. She had just assumed if she were pregnant she would be as vilely ill as the last time.

The doctor shrugged again. He turned back to her husband, eyebrows raised expectantly in anticipation of a tidy payment. Cromwell sighed and produced a small pouch of coins. They spoke in rapid Italian, glancing at her every so often. Elizabeth thought that she would give her wedding ring to know what the two were saying about her.

After the physician was dismissed, Cromwell remained. He studied her, measured her, but said nothing. Elizabeth tried not to flinch under his unremitting stare. She stayed on her side of the room, while he stayed on his.

"I just cannot seem to add you up," he said after a while. "Most people, I can read. I can see what they are going to do before they even know. But, you…" He did not finish the thought.

"You are rather opaque yourself," she said. For a moment, she thought she saw a smile flash across his face, lightning quick and then it was gone. He moved towards her, and she fought the instinct to back away. He reached out to tuck a loose strand of hair behind her ear. She held her breath, unsure if Cromwell meant tenderness or tyranny.

He leaned in to press his lips to her cheek. "Congratulations, madame," he said. "It seems you just told the luckiest lie in Christendom. Let's hope your sister is as lucky as you today."


	15. Chapter 15

Henry envied everyone everything. He envied men with healthy,strapping sons. He envied beautiful girls their youth and guilelessness. And, perhaps he had envied the monasteries their fabulous wealth. Now, as he watched his first minister's hand hover over a chess piece, Henry coveted the large emerald signet ring on Cromwell's finger. The stone was such a deep, true green that rather than refract the light, it absorbed instead of reflected. Henry thought that such a ring should sit on the hand of a king, not some scheming mercenary with the parentage of a goat. But who else had given Cromwell everything he grasped for, other than Henry? The king made his minister rich, but that did not mean Henry Tudor actually liked him. Cromwell was everything men hated: a lawyer, a banker, a mercenary. But Henry could not get along without him. Which was why he kept Cromwell in adjoining apartments, so no one else knew how much he relied on that weasel's advice. Henry might slap Cromwell like a serving wench, but it was Cromwell who sat with him playing chess at this ungodly hour. Not Brandon.

"I am sorry to keep you from your bed, Master Cromwell. All the more so when you have such a beautiful wife waiting for you," Henry said between sips of wine. He tracked Cromwell's hand as it wavered over which piece to move into battle.

"I am your Majesty's most loyal servant. My place is in your service, day or night." Cromwell's hand finally closed over his bishop, and he sent it across the black squares to entrap Henry's king. Cromwell still left him a way out; Henry appreciated that his minister dared to come so close to actually winning.

"I understand you have not yet questioned Master Aske."

"In my experience, nothing will break a man quite so well as uncertainty." Cromwell shrugged. Henry shared a dark smile with him.

"Has your Majesty decided what to with the structures of the suppressed monasteries?" Cromwell continued in a conversational tone that told Henry the most hated banker in England had already dreamed up a way to squeeze even more revenue out of the religious houses. Cromwell smiled pleasantly as Henry edged his king out of danger.

"I do not doubt you have already devised some sort of profit to be had out of the empty buildings," Henry grumbled. He reached for the plate of oysters next to him. With the shell pressed against his teeth, he sucked out the rich flesh with extra gusto, just to see if the rude slurping would phase Cromwell, shake him out of his perpetual politeness. It didn't. Cromwell just kept smiling his half-smile. Exacerbated, Henry wiped the juices from his mouth using the ermine sleeve of his robe.

"After some consultation with Richard Rich, and others, I think it would be imprudent to allow the structures themselves to fall into disrepair," Cromwell said. He leaned over the chess board, beckoning Henry into another conspiracy. "If your Majesty will permit me, I think that the controversy over the dissolution of the religious houses can be mended."

Henry nodded to indicate he was listening, for now.

"Your majesty may be able to heal the wounds caused by the recent uprising—and guarantee a new stream of revenue into the treasury—if your Majesty would agree to the sale of the leases for the monasteries and the land which they occupy." Cromwell tilted his head sheepishly and let his thick lashes brush against his cheeks, as if he were shy at having to discuss such a base thing as money with the king of England. But Henry knew better; he knew Cromwell would auction St. George off to the highest bidder. Nonetheless, Henry had to admit it was a brilliant resolution: bind men to himself and Cromwell by assuaging their wounded pride with fat land parcels.

"What's in it for you, Tom?" Henry asked bluntly. He was always a little afraid that Cromwell took him for a fool with a throne.

Cromwell folded his hands over one another, obscuring the emerald from Henry's view. "Why, the health and stability of your Majesty's realm is the only thing I seek," Cromwell said after a while.

"Just make sure I get my share," Henry snorted. "I don't need to know how you do what you do." He slurped another oyster and decided to change subjects. "I understand your wife has not attended the queen for the past two days. Is Elizabeth ill?" The queen's rooms were supposed to be the queen's territory, but Henry could not help but feel that the way Cromwell always inexplicably pulled his wife out of Jane's service was a subtle way of reminding everyone who was in charge. Soon, princes across Europe would say that the king of England ceded control over his own household to a lowly blacksmith's son.

"Your majesty is too kind with his concern for the queen's sister. The truth is that Elizabeth is with child again; it's important that she rest as much as possible. I hope your Majesty will forgive us for not wanting to make a public declaration when—"

"When the queen remains as barren as nun?" Henry spat. He stared at Cromwell over his wine glass, holding back tears of rage and envy. Sometimes at night, Henry wondered if he did not choose the wrong sister.

"I only meant that when it is such early, delicate days," Cromwell said soothingly.

"Oh piss off, Thomas! I pay you to advise me, not coddle me." Henry bristled inside his fur trimmed robe. He waved his hand, dismissing Cromwell. "Well, I suppose I have kept you up long enough. Leave. Leave, so that you and Elizabeth can keep each other warm."

Cromwell eased out of his seat with as much dignity as possible and bowed deeply to his king. Henry would have battered him with a jug of ale if he thought it would so much as dislodge Cromwell's smug half-smile.

"Oh, Cromwell. I want your estimates of annual income from the abbey leases. I want it first thing in the morning," Henry called over his shoulder to the retreating black figure. He still needed Cromwell. Nothing stoked Henry's contempt as his need.

ii.

Elizabeth tried to pretend she was asleep when she heard the door open and close, followed by the thud of Cromwell's step. She burrowed under the blankets as she heard the rustle of stiff fabric as he shrugged off his robes. For two days, he'd kept her locked up. For two days, she'd seen no one except her husband and the maids who changed the linen. Cromwell had even sent away her personal maids, telling Elizabeth that she was not a child, that she was perfectly capable of bathing and dressing herself. Elizabeth was so bored that she imagined she would have welcomed Anne Stanhope's company at this point. No books, no paints, no company. Cromwell knew how to make a palace into a prison—for her, at least.

"Lissie, you can quit with the farce." He sank beneath the covers. "I know you are awake. I can always tell." He pressed his body against hers. Elizabeth responded by wriggling away from him. Still in shock at Cromwell's violent outburst, Elizabeth was not going to open her body to him again without a fight. He ran his finger tips over her back, across her ribcage to her belly, and then back around to her buttocks. She wanted to elbow him in the groin, but then she thought better of it. Not out of concern for him, but she liked to think her mother had raised her daughter better than that. Besides, Cromwell might think it was an invitation to rough wooing.

"Lissie, don't be like this," he murmured as he planted kisses behind her ear. "You brought all of this on yourself. You wanted to play a mean game, and you cannot fault me for playing too. I ask you to be sweet to me, so that I can be sweet to you. God only knows why you insist on making it so hard on yourself. At any rate, I don't care anymore if you love me or not."

At that, Elizabeth's stomach seized up and her veins felt like ice. Her eyes snapped open, and she rolled over to face Cromwell.

"Is that meant to be some sort of threat?" she demanded.

"I won't fight for you anymore," he said simply. He twirled her copper hair around his long fingers, as if they were having the sweetest pillow talk. "Why should I care what you think about me? You're here, next to me in bed. You are mine. The child you carry is mine. As long as you are waiting for me in bed, night after night, I could care less if you despise me."

"And you mean to subject our child to parents who are in perpetual warfare?" Elizabeth gasped.

"Be sweet to me, and I will be sweet to you," he murmured into her hair. "Oh, you can have all the furs and jewels you wish. But if you want gentleness, you need to earn it."

She flopped over on her back and crossed her arms tight around herself. "Thomas, don't expect me to gravel. I couldn't give a fig if you never gave me another present. Why don't you run along and buy yourself a mistress. In fact, take my money from my first marriage and buy yourself two whores! Ah, but I forget: you already took all of my money. At any rate, don't expect me to perform my wifely duties without a fight."

"Dove, you give me enough headaches as it is," Cromwell chuckled. "I certainly do not need another woman around." He closed his eyes and smiled. "But I can give many kinds of gifts. Take your poor friend Robert Aske-"

Elizabeth bolted upright. "You mean you can spare him?" she gasped.

"Lissie, sometimes you are as dim as your sister. No power can save Aske's life now. What I can give you is the peace of mind knowing he met his end relatively pain free. Or we can muster your brother, Edward, and see if Edward is as creative with Aske as he was with John Constable. It all depends on you: I can let Aske languish for months, only to be hanged, drawn, and quartered. Or, I can dispatch him relatively quickly."

"I can be sweet to you," Elizabeth said through clinched teeth. She started to unbutton the tiny seed pearls on her nightdress.

"I do not doubt it. But, you can keep your dress on tonight: I'm tired." He pulled the quilt up to his chin. "Sweetheart, do free up a little more of the blankets. I'm cold." He yanked the covers towards him. "Oh, and I forgot. You get to watch Aske die, no matter the method. I'm sending you up to York with Charles Brandon to watch the execution. Think of it this way, you get to partake in a little nostalgia for your former life, and you attend your first public function as my wife." He reached over and patted her arm. "My little ambassador."

"You win, Thomas," she sighed.

"I always do," he yawned. He nestled his head deep into the pillow. Within minutes, his breathing slowed and his face relaxed. Elizabeth nudged him gently just to be sure he was asleep. A braver woman might have contemplated smothering him with a pillow, but Elizabeth didn't feel brave. She just felt defeated. Before blowing out the candle, she stole another look at her husband. With his large eyes and dark hair, she imagined he must have been striking as a young man. Even now, he was still a handsome man in his own way. But there was a hardness to him, a politely vicious streak that unnerved everyone at court.

"What happened to you, Thomas?" she whispered into the dark.

iii.

Cromwell whistled a merry tune as he invited himself to the queen's rooms. Jane Seymour had never asked for a private audience with him. Never. Not even after all he had done for the Seymours. Well, Plain Jane, Cromwell thought, Today is your lucky day. Elizabeth's friend, Ursula, was the first to spot him: a black ink-blot in an otherwise cheerful, brightly lit room. The color drained out of her face, and she dropped into a curtsey with some effort. He could not blame her for her discomfort. Nothing good ever followed when Thomas Cromwell visited a queen.

Jane glanced up from her sewing, and did a double-take. She squeaked a little in surprise, dropping her thimble. It hit the floor and rolled towards Cromwell. He nudged it with the toe of his boot. As he knelt to pick up the thimble, he noticed Jane's hands grip her chair in fear. Perfect.

"Good morning, Madame," he smiled. As he bowed, he offered the thimble to Jane. He stood just far enough from the queen to force her to come to him if she wanted her thimble back. Jane stuck fast to her seat.

"Ladies, a word alone with the Lord Privy Seal, if you please," Jane said smoothly. As her women filed out, Jane met Cromwell's unrelenting gaze with her own defiant stare. When the last of her ladies shut the door behind her, only then did Jane snatch the thimble out of Cromwell's hand.

"What's the meaning of this intrusion?" she mumbled as she settled back into her seat. Jane narrowed her eyes as Cromwell helped himself to a chair, but she did not protest.

"You tell me what's the meaning of this treason." Cromwell pulled Elizabeth's letter to Aske out of his sleeve. "Or maybe you can't tell me. God knows you have enough trouble spelling your own name correctly."

"I will not be insulted in my own rooms, Mister Cromwell." Jane stabbed her needle in and out of the fabric. For one heavy moment, the hiss of thread moving through cloth was the only sound in the room.

"You're not the first queen to put on a brave face in front of me," Cromwell warned. "Elizabeth has been far more cooperative."

"A hostage will cooperate with anything," Jane scoffed. She finally met his eyes. "What have you done with Elizabeth? If you harmed even a single hair on her head-"

"I may be a common man, but I am not a wife-beater."

"Plenty of rich men will still take a belt to their wives given half a chance," Jane muttered.

"Poor milk and honey Jane. Has the king taken out his temper on you? Well, that makes two of us. But you ruffle your feathers for nothing, Madame; I am here to reconcile. Lay down your arms and listen to what I have to say."

Jane bit her lip in hesitation. Cromwell wondered if Elizabeth got the habit from her sister or the other way around. "Does Edward know you're here?" she asked.

"Edward is probably too busy torturing people to even know it's daybreak. But, what I require from you will require a simple yes or no. Do you think you can manage that?"

"I want to know if Elizabeth is all right," she said quietly. "I will not agree to anything until you tell me that much."

"She's never been better. In fact, she's probably knitting a cap or booties for the new baby as we speak. By the way, I'm sending her up north to…finish her education." Cromwell smiled a lethal smile. "But, I already have what I want from her, mostly anyways. Let's talk about what I want from you. It's not much, really."

Jane stabbed her needle into a pin cushion. "I find that difficult to believe."

"I just need a queen in my corner, not one that fights me every step of the way. I helped you, now you can help me. I am more than happy to tuck this treasonous letter into some forgotten drawer in my cluttered desk. But for that to happen, you cannot just sit there and look pretty. Be a good queen and run to your king. Tell him how you fret for his health, how you worry that the son—which you have yet to produce—will be thrown to the wolves. Tell the king that you doubt your brothers' intentions—they're greedy usurpers anyway-and you beseech the king to appoint a different man as Lord Protector. Someone beyond your own family. Someone—"

"Someone like you," Jane finished.

Cromwell feigned bashfulness. "Well, if you insist."

"You reach too high," Jane shook her head. "The privy council will never let you anywhere near—"

"I'm giving you two months. I made you a queen in as many weeks. Do it. Or answer to your treachery in a court of law."

Jane threw her sewing at Cromwell's feet. "Why bother sending Elizabeth up north? Making a pregnant woman bounce around in the saddle for a fortnight…"

"Pregnant or not, she needs to learn her lesson. And she will. When she watches Robert Aske's pudgy little feet dance the hangman's volte as he slowly strangles over the walls at York." Cromwell picked up Jane's embroidery and neatly folded it into a triangle.

"Elizabeth will despise you for forever if you make her a party to such barbarism," Jane admonished.

"She is my wife; love has nothing to do with it. She's duty bound to obey me under law," Cromwell shrugged. He handed Jane her sewing and threw a wink into the bargain.

"The law. Of course. Who would know better than you?" Jane snorted. " You win. I will speak to the king about your proposal."

Cromwell clapped his hands together. "Splendid! I look forward to our future endeavors. Madame, you may not know it yet, but this could be the start of a remarkable partnership."

Late that afternoon, sitting in his barge and listening to the lap of the oars on the river, Cromwell allowed a doubt to enter his mind. He wondered if perhaps he was being too harsh with Elizabeth. Surely, she could be just as effectively reprimanded by a temporary banishment from court? Maybe send her to one of his London houses, locked away until he came to her at night? No. He hardened his resolve and his heart. He imagined that a real man would have sealed Elizabeth away in the Tower to waste away like so many of the Plantagenet pretenders. Instead, she probably woke up to her breakfast in bed. And people said he was heartless.

Whatever doubt flickered in his mind about his methods was extinguished when he walked in Aske's cell. The poor, old fool looked doleful and embarrassed of his current surroundings. Cromwell crinkled his nose in disgust at the sour, sweet smell of urine. He wondered if he could check his reflection on Aske's bald, shiny head.

"I asked for a written confession _yesterday_," Cromwell said without introduction.

"I can confess only the truth, my lord," Aske replied. He did not rise from his cot. Cromwell made a mental check of the slight.

"Then by all means, enlighten me with the truth Master Aske." Cromwell swept his adversary a mocking bow.

"Since you ask me the truth, I will answer that. In all parts of the realm, men's hearts were most hurt by the destruction of the abbeys because they thought, perhaps with reason that this was the first fruit of the destruction of their whole religion in England."

Cromwell sighed and paced. This was shaping up to be a long interrogation if it was left to Aske's storytelling. He tried a leading question. "Can you not agree that it was rather the spreading of false rumors? For example, the parish churches were going to be pulled down which actually caused the rebellion?" He raised his eyebrows expectantly, but Aske furiously shook his head.

"No. It was the fact that the abbeys were being burned and suppressed," Aske insisted. Cromwell studied the perfect egg-shape of Aske's guileless face. Throw some paint on him and he could be an Easter egg. Cromwell almost laughed at his own joke. He pulled up a chair next to Aske.

"Tell me, why were they so important to you?"

"Because," Aske began patiently. "the abbeys in the North gave alms to the poor and laudibly served God. They were one of the beauties of this realm to all men and strangers alike. They took care of their tenants, their servants, their local communities in every sort of way…"

Cromwell nodded along with Aske's cadence to give the appearance he was paying attention. Actually, he wondered if he hurried Aske along that he might catch Lissie in her afternoon bath. A smile accidentally broke through his face. Aske's own face lit up, thinking he had breached the stone barricades of Cromwell's pity. He hurried to correct Aske's assumption

"So you begrudged the suppression and the king's supremacy?" he said without sentiment. He took pleasure in watching Aske sweat and wring his hands. Cromwell stood up to leave; Aske was just too easy a prey to be entertaining. "It might surprise you, but I actually intend to save you." Cromwell flashed his broad, politician smile. Unfortunately, it worked because Aske raised his eye-brows expectantly. Cromwell rolled his eyes. "Oh, be of good cheer my man. I will string you up like the rest of traitorous villains, eventually. But, I need to keep you alive for a while. It has not escaped my attention that you were once something of a tutor to my wife. And so you will be again. She still has one lesson left to learn."

v.

Elizabeth wondered what would happen if she broke the Lord Privy Seal's teeth. Cromwell had just lifted her into her saddle. Now, he tucked her boots into the stirrups as if she were some idiot child who could not sit a horse. One swift kick would hit her husband square in the jaw. Elizabeth smiled at the thought. As he lectured her about not riding too fast, and resting frequently for the sake of the child she carried, Elizabeth thought that slamming her boot into her husband's teeth would be met with sympathetic nods. Of course, it would be controversial in Parliament, but she imagined many Englishmen would applaud.

Elizabeth broke off her fantasy of a toothless Cromwell when he tucked something in her riding boot.

"You'll need that for the smell. Put some under your nose. Douse it in your kerchief." Cromwell smiled up at her as if he were doing his wife some great favor.

"Why do I need something for the smell? What smell are we talking about?" She suspected that sometimes Cromwell delighted in shoving her own naivete in her face.

Cromwell just kept smiling his feline smile. "My little ambassador." He waved to Charles Brandon as if they were the dearest of friends. The duke, who would be escorting Aske to his death, winced at having been identified by Cromwell. Brandon kicked his horse over to Elizabeth.

"My lord, have you not said enough farewells to your wife?" Brandon sighed. "We really must be going. Should have left hours ago, considering the baggage train that will have to follow your wife."

Elizabeth bristled at the insult. "Lord Suffolk: I am perfectly aware that we are not going to Paris." She'd only brought three gowns and as many changes of linen, which she balled into a saddle bag. Cromwell had wanted her to bring the furs he'd gotten her for New Year's, but it didn't sit well with her—showing off her finery in the midst of devastation. She just wanted to sink into her saddle and disappear.

"Just don't slow me down," Brandon sighed.

"I won't."

"She needs her rest," Cromwell said smoothly, barely disguising his irritation at Brandon trying to override his instructions.

"Then shouldn't she be in bed, my lord?" Brandon managed to sneak the last word in and nudged his horse forward.

An uncontrollable grin broke through Elizabeth's face. She quickly set her face back to rights when Cromwell grabbed her hand, pulling her torso down towards him.

"Don't try to speak to Aske. Don't even try to see him. As far as you are concerned, he is already dead," Cromwell hissed. Elizabeth nodded rapidly to show that she was being compliant and sweet. Selfishly, she did not want any more trouble; her head was too full with worry as it was.

Somewhere north of Doncaster, a stench swung like a club and almost knocked Elizabeth off her horse. Her eyes watered and squinted, and her chest burned with every breath. She had a brief memory of her girlhood: Tom dragging her through the trees to see a dead cat he'd found, foul and bloated with flies. Desperately, one hand fumbled in her riding boot for the vial of peppermint oil, while the other hand pulled her cloak tight across her face. She reached too far over her mare, because she toppled to the ground.

"What, what is that smell?" Elizabeth asked through strangled breaths. She tore the cap off vial and doused a kerchief with the peppermint oil. Breathing deeply through the cloth, she managed to straighten herself up.

Charles Brandon kicked his horse back to where she stood. Glaring down at her, he asked: "Good God, what is the delay now?"

"That awful smell. I cannot see straight for the stench."

Brandon swung himself off his mount. "The smell my lady? Why that's the smell of the Reformation in the air." He dragged Elizabeth by her elbow, forcing her a few pace to the top of the bluff. He pointed to the scene below. "_Look_," he barked. "Look and open your eyes."

At first, Elizabeth could only make out neat rows of short trees. She rubbed her eyes, and the trees became gallows. The swaying branches turned to plump, taut corpses that moved in time with the wind. Elizabeth tried to scream, but no sound came out. She shoved the kerchief in her mouth, sucking in the clean smell of peppermint.

Brandon turned to leave. "Stop gawking and get on your horse, so we can leave." He cast another look at the hell below them. "What's done is done."

Trembling, Elizabeth allowed him to hoist her back into her saddle without a word of protest. She said nothing and stared straight ahead for the rest of the day.

Elizabeth was not sure if it was fate, irony, or a cruel joke by Cromwell's itinerary, but nightfall found them at her first husband's estate. She looked around for familiar faces, but found no trace of living things. Even the livestock was nothing more than a stinking pile of rot. In her old rooms, she made do with a cold sponge bath, hiking her skirts above her legs and shoving the wash cloth down the front of her dress. Finally, she tried to wash the smell of death out of her hair with the last of the water. With no drying towel, and no maid, she was left to roast her back while trying to dry her hair in front of the fire.

Her hand found its way to her belly. She held her breath, waiting for a sign, a stirring, that some life existed within her.

"Are you in there, my little one?" Elizabeth said aloud. "Can you hear me sweetheart?" She drummed her fingers over her still flat belly. "You know, this place wasn't always like this. There were lots of servants running back and forth, stoking the fires. I never remembered it being this cold. And, the sheep. The hills were covered with cows and sheep." Elizabeth rubbed a tear away with her sleeve. "Don't worry my love. You will be the luckiest baby in England: live in a large place—much larger than this crumbling place. And boy or girl, you will have the best education. A real tutor. More than I ever had."

"You know, my first wife used to do that when she was carrying our son."

Elizabeth stifled a gasp at the uninvited visitor. "My lord Suffolk, you cannot just frighten a pregnant woman who thinks she's alone."

Brandon seated himself next to Elizabeth. He handed her a cup of warm ale. "She used to speak to the baby while he was still in her belly. She was convinced he could hear her." He paused a little at the memory, and then shook he handsome head free of it. "So, how is it to be back? Do you find your old home much changed?"

"As I recall, the cattle were grazing and the servants weren't dead. So, yes, your Grace. I find this place much changed." Elizabeth edged away from Brandon. What did he want? Why was he here?"

"If I was unkind to you earlier today, I am sorry for it," Brandon continued. "It seems I have seen so much death lately that I forget that it shocks others. But it was not my will. That carnage was at the behest of powers above me." He reached over to clink his mug against hers. "There. We are friends, travelling the open road together. No need to be so defensive."

"We are not travelling to my bed tonight, so you can save your breath and your charm."

"My reputation precedes me, I admit. I could not call myself a man if I didn't try. But, you misunderstand me." Brandon studied her over the rim of his mug. "When you pressed that small piece of paper into my hand, I should have tossed it in the fire, ripped it to shreds. That's why he's sending you to York, isn't it? You tried to help Master Aske, and now your husband wants to teach you a lesson you will never forget."

"You write my life so well, my lord Suffolk, you might as well be one of those ancient chroniclers."

He reached over and pulled her mug from her hands. "Give it here, since you aren't drinking it. Believe it or not, I come here as a friend. Today, you looked so tired, lonely, and sad. I thought to myself, it must be no easy thing to be Lady Cromwell."

Maybe it was because Brandon was so kind, so handsome. Or maybe it was because he was the only friend she could possibly cling to that night. But Elizabeth ended up telling the duke far more than she wanted. She told him how Edward forced her to marry Cromwell, how she was perpetually torn between her family and her husband. She even told Brandon how, under threat from Cromwell, she had given false testimony against the Lady Anne.

"Little Lissie, you have your back against the wall," Brandon remarked. "And not for reasons of your own doing. Does your brother, Edward, have any idea of the danger he's put you in? Does your husband?"

"Danger? You mean like rebels? On the way to York?"

"No, I mean the closest sort of danger." Emboldened by ale, Brandon tapped on Elizabeth's belly. It made a hollow sound. "Cousins. Cousins have always caused problems for the English throne. If you have a son-"

Elizabeth smacked his hand away. "Cromwell has many grand ideas, but he is no traitor. No usurper." This was dangerous talk. She wished that Brandon would take his ale and his conversation elsewhere.

"Good intentions do not survive the king's suspicion. Look at the Poles. I'm surprised Edward and Cromwell never considered that."

"I did not ask to be put in this position. What was I supposed to do?" Elizabeth folded her arms defensively.

"But here you are all the same. If I were you, I would be on my knees praying for a daughter. Unless Cromwell is as particular about sons as the king. In which case, toss your dice in the air and choose which man you would rather anger."

Elizabeth groaned and buried her face in her hands. She wished that she had just shooed Charles Brandon away like a street urchin instead of confessing everything.

vi.

Cromwell should have been sound asleep, but then there was no rest for the weary, was there? In a matter of days, Robert Aske would be dead. The traitor who almost unseated Cromwell would be dead—and in a terrible fashion too. The man who came between Cromwell and his king, Cromwell and his wife, would be no more. In retrospect, Cromwell considered that perhaps it was not one of his better ideas to send his wife on the road with a man like Charles Brandon. As he lay awake in his empty bed, he ticked off the reasons on his hand. Suffolk was younger. Better looking. A duke. Wealthier? Cromwell drew the line there. He consoled himself in the knowledge that he was second only to the king's treasury in gold.

He moved to the middle of the bed, but it didn't feel right. When Bess died, he continued to sleep on the right side, saving her side in case she decided to come back. In the first days of marriage to Elizabeth, she rolled onto his side of the bed and never left. He was content to take Bess's side of the mattress and imagined that Bess probably minded him on her turf much less than another woman. Strange, he thought, how quickly he had gotten used to having another warm, fragrant body to cuddle against at night. When Bess and the girls died, Gregory was in hysterics. The little boy was convinced that the Sweat (which assumed human-like attributes in Gregory's mind) was going to come back for him. During that hot frenzied summer plague—which almost took Anne Boleyn—Gregory would scuttle under the covers of his parents' bed, convinced that the Sweat would be scared off by his formidable father. Gregory had clung his terrified body to that of Cromwell's. Never adept at soothing fear or tears, Cromwell tried to instill something of a manly sense of adventure in his son.

"It's just us bachelors now," Cromwell had told him. "Just us bachelors on the road." And Gregory latched onto that like a drowning man holds onto a piece of driftwood. Even when Cromwell's sisters died during the next outbreak, Gregory puffed out his chest and declared: "We bachelors can take care of the cousins."

Cromwell threw aside one pillow. He grabbed another and flipped it so the cool side rested against his cheek. The one night he actually got to bed at a decent hour, and he could not even sleep. In his restlessness, he was forced to admit to himself that he missed Elizabeth. Even when Lissie was upset with him, which was most of the time, he liked nestling his face against her scented hair, breathing in orange and jasmine. He wondered if she missed him too. Maybe she was not tossing and turning, longing for him like a lover. But perhaps as a habit whose absence is like a void? Tonight, he hungered for her, and the pangs of need terrified him. Of course he cared what she thought about him. It was only natural: that need to love and be loved in return. Can't be helped, Cromwell thought, I'm a rather sensitive creature.

vii.

Elizabeth's back never recovered from the night Charles Brandon told her she was doomed. After he left, she'd fallen asleep on the bench, only to wake up the next morning in a completely perpendicular position: her top half lay on the bench while her legs stretched out in front of her. She rubbed her lower back but said nothing. Brandon had told her that he liked that she was a fast rider (unlike his wife) who did not complain much (unlike his mistress).

As the horses clattered under the gate of York, Elizabeth wrenched her body around to look behind her. Somewhere, amongst the dirty faces of the dozens of riders, was a beaten and terrified Robert Aske.

"Eyes ahead, my lady," Brandon said. "Whatever you are looking for is not behind you."

"How will he die?" Elizabeth whispered. She held her breath at the answer.

"Hanging. That's all I know."

"When?"

"First thing tomorrow morning."

Elizabeth opened her mouth to say something, but only a stupid whimper came out instead. She'd wanted to tell Brandon that she had never actually seen someone die. Not her mother. Not her younger siblings.

"If I were to tell you something to tell Mister Aske, would you—"

Brandon held up his hand, jerking his horse to a halt. "Do not even think it. That is why you are even here in the first place."

Just as well, Elizabeth thought. What would she even say? How sorry she was? How she wished she could have helped him more? She imagined that anything she said would ring empty and trite. That night, she laid out her last clean gown and linens carefully. She wondered if Aske got to choose which clothes in which he would die. Then she wondered why she was even thinking about what she'd wear tomorrow. She only had one choice left, and only her muddy riding boots to go with the plain black dress. She'd brought no jewelry with her, not even her wedding ring. She did not want anyone to know who she was, and any of her jewelry would have been announcing to Yorkshire: Here comes Cromwell's harlot! You and your children are starving, but Mrs. Cromwell has a leopard fur stole! The endless wealth seemed endlessly embarrassing in this cold country. When she asked for a bath tub, she tried to make it seem as if she did not expect it, as if she had not had a hot bath with rosewater every day for the past seven months. She tried to wipe her face of dismay when someone finally brought her a cooking cauldron filled with lukewarm, filmy water. I'm tired, cold, and dirty, she thought, My friend is going to die tomorrow and it's all Thomas Cromwell's fault. For one sinful moment, Elizabeth wished it was Cromwell set to die tomorrow, instead of Aske.

_Elizabeth wants to hide. Something horrible is going to happen today. She was not at the mass, instead Madge Shelton grabbed her hand, giggling that there were two young men bearing wine and sweets. But, she heard the story from Jane Boleyn that Anne's pastor had given a scathing sermon about Secretary Cromwell. And polite Mister Cromwell apparently smiled through the entire production, smiled as he had the pastor arrested. He even smiled at the queen, saying: "Thank you madame, for making things so clear."_

_The queen's sister-in-law clapped her hands together as she whispered in Elizabeth's ear. "So, now Master Secretary wants to speak with us: you, me, Madge, and Nan." Jane clapped her hands together again as if they were going to a party._

_The queen has not given her a chore, so Elizabeth folds her hands in front of her, not because she is trying to be demure, but because she is trying to hide a stain of strawberry wine on the front of her dress. If Queen Anne knows that she has been drinking this early in the afternoon, and spilled on her flawless ivory maid's dress, she will get her ears boxed. Elizabeth stifles a hiccup. She makes the mistake of wondering aloud where her sister is. _

"_She's with my husband," Anne barks. The queen has a low voice that drips like honey over her sentences when she's amused. But when the queen grows dark, her words come out jagged as broken glass. _

_Elizabeth forms an: "Oh" with her mouth._

"_Or was that a rhetorical question?" Anne mutters. _

_Elizabeth looks around for help. But she has no friends in this room. Jane Boleyn wears a black smile with her white pearls. Trouble excites her._

"_I will tell you where your sister is: about half way to my place." The queen stabs her sewing needle in and out of the embroidery. She stares straight ahead at Elizabeth. Propriety says that she should look down in the face of her queen, but something about Anne's eyes makes it impossible to turn away. They are truest shade of blue that Elizabeth has ever seen, jewels sparkling from the queen's heart-shaped face. _

"_You think you are so special, and the rules do not apply to you," Anne smiles. Both she and Secretary Cromwell smile when they go in for the kill. _

"_I can buy another dress…" she hopes this is about the ruined dress. She's wrong._

"_You think that because you have some money of your own behind you, you are different. You are a woman like any other, because you are a woman living in a man's world." Anne looked off in the distance, but continued to furiously sew. "Do not mistake that fact. Do not think that just because you are free to choose your next husband means that you are free. And you are a troublemaker to begin with. Sooner or later, you are going to press your luck, stumble outside some line you should not cross. Mark my words some man—husband, brother, father—will stomp his boot on your throat and then ask you why you made him do it. Watch a man declare his love, and watch that love grow to disdain the moment you disagree with him. And you, you can read. So, I know you will eventually say something to get yourself in trouble. I know all of this, because you remind me of myself." The queen accidentally stabs herself in the palm. Madge squeals at the blood, but Anne does not take her eyes off Elizabeth._

Elizabeth woke herself up, coughing on her own scream. She held her hand to her heart. She hadn't dreamed about Anne Boleyn in months. She found that older bad memories got pushed aside by new fears and disappointments. She pulled herself up from the bed. She'd fallen asleep on the dress she'd set out and now it was wrinkled beyond redemption. Briefly, she considered hiding under the bed and missing the execution entirely. But then she told herself that Robert Aske deserved to see a face full of love as he left this world. She knew that if she were going to die, she would want at least one kind heart in the jeering crowd.

She made her way down to the gallows in time to catch Brandon with his face in his hands. She gently touched his elbow, but he shrugged her hand off. Unsure of what to do, her hands found their way to her belly on their own accord.

"Close your eyes, my little one," she whispered to the tiny life inside of her. "Close your eyes and forget you were ever here sweet heart."

From somewhere in the distance, she heard the clank of chains. She whipped her head around. Standing directly under the gallows, she couldn't see anything.

"What's-what's happening?" Elizabeth could hear the labored thudding of foot-steps and a groan of pain. "What's wrong?" She started to cry. "What have they done to Master Aske?" Like a child, she tugged on Brandon's fur sleeve when he would not look at her. "But-but, my husband told me that he would not hurt him if I did not make trouble-"

"Be still," Brandon hissed.

Composure was slipping from Elizabeth like she was slipping on ice. "I haven't done anything, have I?" She continued to pull on his sleeve. "Have you been reporting to Cromwell on me? Is that why Aske must suffer?" The clinking of chains neared. She could hearing strained mumbling, but the breeze snatched the words away.

"Just close your eyes, shut your mouth, and pray for his soul," Brandon said out of the corner of his mouth. "Pray God he dies quickly."

Elizabeth's breath convulsed as she tried to suck air in, only to find her breath trapped in the upper half of her chest. "Why would he not die quickly?" she demanded. She heard a familiar voice above, trembling as it begged forgiveness of the Lord Privy Seal. Without meaning to, she called out: "Master Aske?"

Brandon's hand clamped over her mouth in less than a second. "Gather yourself together!"

From her vantage point, she watched as droplets of blood snuck through the wood rampart. "Why is he bleeding, your Grace? What have they done to him?" Then, she looked up at the gallows. The rope Aske was to hang from was too long, meaning he would not break his neck, meaning he would slowly strangle.

"It's too late, Lissie." Brandon shook his head.

"You- you have to stop this. The rope's too long, he'll suffer. You're the Duke of Suffolk, do something!"

Brandon slammed his hand over her mouth again. She started to struggle, but the fight left her as she and Brandon watched Robert Aske leap from the castle wall. His chains clinked together like church bells. Brandon's palm fell from her mouth as he stared on in mute horror. Aske was covered in so much dried blood, Elizabeth could not make out the source wound. A sickening, gurgling noise cut through the morning air. Aske's feet pattered through the weightless air, seeking solid ground that was not there.

"Christ's sake, he's still alive," Elizabeth gasped. "He's alive, we have to help him, we must do something," she blubbered.

"We do nothing except walk away," Brandon said quietly. He steadied Elizabeth when her feet almost gave way.

viii.

When they returned to London, no one was there to greet them. No one except Francis Bryan. Elizabeth wondered if he knew that she had dissolved into hysterics at Aske's execution and had not said a single word in three days. Francis leaned against a wagon with his easy charm, tossing a ball for a stableyard mutt. He had the grace to sweep the solemn travelers and exaggerated bow.

"The conquering heroes return!" he flipped his feathered hat in the air. "You two look as sour as pickles," he sniffed. Glancing between them, he remarked: "It would appear I lost my wager. I stand corrected. Lissie, you are a woman of uncompromising morals!"

For a moment, Elizabeth just looked on without a clue. Then she measure Brandon's sheepish, hunched shoulders and Francis's toothy grin.

"You wagered that his grace would bed me?" She almost burst into tears. Not over the fact that anyone would make such a crude bet over her—she expected it from Francis. But she had not spoken in three days, and now it was to scold Francis like a terrier.

"I would have given you half of my winnings." Francis shrugged. He pulled her out of her saddle carefully, as if she were a glass doll. "Good to have you back. None of the queen's other ladies understand my colorful humor. You owe me a dance and a card game." He sniffed the air. "But not until you've had a bath."

"Well, that's all I want: my bath and my bed. I think I am going to sleep for a year," she mumbled. Francis hooked his arm through hers.

"Before you sink under your year long enchantment, I must tell you something. Your sister has announced to the king that she is with child."

Elizabeth imagined that she and Francis mirrored one another's skepticism. Francis nodded. "I know, I know. Cromwell thinks she is lying. The king is too deliriously happy to care. And me? I don't care one way or the other, long as I can gamble and whore." He heartily clapped Elizabeth on the back. "I hope you like your quail eggs, because that is all the court has had to eat for the past two weeks."

In spite of her muddy riding boots and her filthy hair and clothes, Elizabeth went to the queen's rooms before her own. She stood in the presence chamber feeling like a stranger in a strange land. Servants and ladies in waiting darted in front her, carrying sweet meats and strumming lutes. Nothing had changed in Jane's safe, pastel world. The ladies were gossiping about one another and women's laughter carried from one room to another. Elizabeth's cheeks burned at having carried the stench and filth of the outside world into Jane's sanctuary. But, Elizabeth did not feel safe anywhere anymore. And how could they carry on jousting and feasting, when half of the country was hanging from a rope? Did Jane even care that Robert Aske was dead? Or did she just shake her pretty head of the worry and continue on with her needlepoint?

Ursula walked by her with scarcely looking up. Her friend shook her head, muttering, "Quails eggs, more fucking quails eggs. If I see another box of those things I will smash them against the window!" She startled at bit at the sight of Elizabeth's muddy boots and the smell of horse and mud. "Good God, Lissie! I imagine you feel about as good as you look right now. Here." Ursula plucked a glass of wine from one of the serving trays. "Was it just terrible?"

"Oh, it was just _grand_, Ursula."

Ursula swallowed in hesitation. "Er…do you want to speak with the queen? Have you heard the good news."

"It's a blessing," Elizabeth said tightly. "Tell the queen…tell her…in fact do not even mention I was here." At that moment, Jane looked up from her seat. She tried to smile at Elizabeth, but she looked sick with worry. She and Elizabeth held one another's gaze for a moment, staring out across the gilded prison they had created for themselves. Finally, Elizabeth raised her glass in a solemn salute and turned to leave.

After having spent the past two weeks hating Cromwell and imagining creative ways for him to suffer, it was strange for Elizabeth to actually see the man in the flesh. He must have sent riders out to tell him when she would be back because he was waiting for her in their rooms. Elizabeth wondered if he had been hating her too and was now baffled by her actual presence. She'd had an elaborate dialogue planned out in which she would tell him that he disgusted her, that he had no redeeming qualities, and that she would ask the king for a divorce. Instead, all that came out was: "Hello."

Cromwell threw his arms around her while her own hands stayed glued to her hips. He did not even flinch at the smell of her unwashed body as he kissed her cheeks and her forehead.

"I missed you, my love," he whispered against her skin. His hands dropped to her belly. "How is the little one? You did not exert yourself, did you? Charles Brandon, he did not try to put his hands on you, did he?"

Elizabeth tried to take a step back , but he just took one forwards. Was this a jest, an ambush? Was he being kind because he thought she'd finally learned her lesson?

"I missed you," he said again. "Our bed is much too big without you." He squeezed her tighter, so her face smashed against her chest. Elizabeth's mind raced: what in the hell was he up to now?

"I have a surprise for you," he continued. Elizabeth managed to wriggle her hands up between them. She gently pushed him back.

"Can I not have my bath first?"

"Your maids are still filling your tub." He put his hand on the small of her back, guiding her. "This won't take long." He took her into one of the sitting rooms. She scanned the room, praying his _surprise_ was benign, pleasant even. Maybe he got her a little dog? Then she saw it. One of the walls had been knocked out, exposing an antechamber that must have been sealed over years ago. The walls were splashed with a few shade of yellow.

He covered her small hand with his large one. "Well, what do you think?"

"About what?" She blinked uncomprehendingly.

"The nursery. I think the baby should live here with us, at first. At least until the little one gets too big."

"The nursery," Elizabeth repeated flatly. Deep inside her, an inappropriate laugh threatened to burst forth. While Robert Aske was slowly dying, Cromwell had been agonizing over which color to paint the nursery.

"We'll have Master Holbein paint it—nothing to dark or serious to frighten our little scamp. Maybe a woodland scene—"

The hysterical giggles that Elizabeth was trying to swallow broke free. At first her shoulders heaved without a sound, but then she snorted with full blown laughter.

"I just watched a kind man die an awful death. I cannot get the smell of decay out of my hair. I have seen my home reduced to rot and ash. But you? You are painting the God damn nursery!" Elizabeth gasped to catch her breath, but she could not stop laughing. She turned around and walked out of the room before he could see she had started crying.

Elizabeth felt only marginally improved by suppertime. She'd had a punishing bath in which she scoured every inch of her skin and furiously scrubbed her hair. Yet, she still felt dirty. No matter how much orange flower water she added, she could not get the stink of death out of her nose, or her hair for that matter. She'd gone through half a bar of the Turkish soap before one of the maids yanked it out of her hand, afraid her lady would scrub her skin off.

Cromwell was talking about shipping rates—or was it exchange rates? Elizabeth just wanted to eat her braised rabbit and her plum pudding and go to bed. She nodded every once in a while to give the appearance of unfettered, wifely attention.

"I'm not a bad man."

At that, Elizabeth dropped her knife. She tore her eyes from her plate and dared to look him full on in the face.

"I do only the king's bidding. No more, no less. And that is why the king has raised me so high. Because I do as he wishes, no matter how cruel or unseemly. I will do what the others will not."

Elizabeth gulped down the piece of meat that had been sitting in her mouth. "Surely…there are…limits?" She offered.

Cromwell did not even blink. "No. No, there are not. I am willing to do what others are not. That is why I sit at the right hand of the king. Not Brandon. Not your brother. Me." He pushed some of the bones around on his plate. "What you saw in Yorkshire was the spite of the king; it wasn't my bile." He wiped his mouth with his napkin and decided to change tack. "Now, which color did you say you liked best for the nursery?"


	16. Chapter 16

**A/N: warning—heavily implied sadism ahead. **

** A/N: Cromwell actually tried to push the Poor Laws through Parliament in 1536, not 1537. But as usual, I've tweaked history for the purposes of the story.**

** Sorry about the late update. Thanks again for all the reviews and feedback, especially to R2-D2106 and Squalor Victoria.**

A few weeks before Easter, Anne Stanhope took it into her head that she wanted a baby. Edward had decided to completely quit her bed while Francis Bryan had his hands up her skirts. Indeed, Edward was surprised that such frequent, indiscreet adultery had not already resulted in a bastard. But, he could understand how his wife would want a child. After all, it seemed half of England was pregnant: his sisters, Cromwell's obscure niece, Thomas More's daughter Meg, and Mary Boleyn. And of course, there were always the rumors that Ursula Misseldon had gone and gotten herself full of the king's bastard.

Anne Stanhope was never a woman to stand back and let a fashion trend pass her by.

"Edward, please. Most husbands beg their wives, instead of the other way around." Anne scratched a fingernail across his nipple. They lay in his bed, his torn shirt thrown to the side.

"My darling wife, you cannot just burst into my chambers and rip my shirt off of me. A more sensitive man might call it rape. And I am very busy." He gestured to the papers on the bed, now wrinkled under the weight of Anne's ass. He'd been stealing Cromwell's accounting reports for the past two weeks. Sneaking into the offices and grabbing whatever papers he could, shoving them into his shirt, like a peasant stealing apples.

"But, Edward," she whined. "Do you not want a nursery full of sons?" She teased his nipple until it stood as hard as a cherry pit.

It wasn't that Edward disliked his wife or thought her unattractive. He simply felt nothing for her. Nothing good or bad, just indifferent. He lacked the needs that took other men deep into the night, in search of warm arms and wet thighs. Most of the time, his flaccid cock slept soundly on his belly.

All he wanted was to review the numbers and go to bed. If he could review the entries, then he could figure out how much revenue Cromwell was actually claiming. If he could figure out where Cromwell made most of his money, then Edward could control it. If Edward could control Cromwell's money, he could destroy him. And if he could destroy Cromwell, then—

"Edward!"

He looked down at Anne. She pawed at his limp cock. "Do you not find me desirable?" She pursed her lips and raised her eyebrows.

He wanted to tell her not to take it personally. Instead, he said: "You know what I like best."

Anne looked as though she had taken on a mouthful of seawater. She swallowed deeply. "If I do…_that_…will you join with me so I that I may conceive?"

"Surprised that your Francis has not stuffed you full of babies."

"I don't let him spill his seed inside me anymore." Edward thought he almost caught Anne blushing.

"Well….get on with it I suppose," Edward sighed. He surrendered to the fact the he would not get any more work done with his wife around. Her mouth was warm and just barely moist when she wrapped her lips around his skinny prick. He was small and soft enough that she could envelop the shaft and balls in a single gulp. Inexplicably, Edward's thoughts took him to the Tower. He imagined the damp smell of the ancient building. He remembered John Constable chained before him: the grime, the sweat, and the dizzying sensation that Edward Seymour could do anything in that room. Anything.

His cock stiffened, and Anne made little pleasure sounds, thinking that her tongue was to thank. Edward knew that he was not a bugger, not a sodomite like George Boleyn. Fear aroused Edward. Fear, whether in men or women, quickened his heart and pumped blood between his legs. He closed his eyes, leaned his head back and groaned. In tender detail, he relived every moment of Constable's terror.

Edward knotted his hands through Anne's hair and slammed her head up and down on his prick, not caring when her teeth accidentally (or not) broke the thin layer of skin. He licked his lips and transported himself back to that cell deep in the bowels of the Tower. The widening of Constable's eyes when he saw the poker glowing from the heat of the coals. His childlike prayers when Edward told the guards to pull off his pants. The exquisite hiss when the molten iron of the rod went inside of Constable. The scream that came out of the man was otherworldly, almost purifying in its sheer anguish.

He let himself come inside Anne's mouth without giving her so much as an "Oh, my God," as a warning. She tried to recoil, but he grabbed her by the jaws. She coughed, gagged, flailed. After his hands fell to his side, limp from the force of his climax, Anne tore away from him like a hunted fox. She sat back on her heels and sized her husband up with bloodshot eyes.

"Bastard," she muttered. She smoothed her hair back behind her ears. "What is it you want Edward? You certainly do not want me. What is it that you want?"

Behind heavy lidded eyes, Edward savored the scene with John Constable: the power he felt and the excitement.

"I want…_more_," Edward smiled.

Actually, the next morning, Edward _expected_ more when he flung open the doors of Jane's rooms. His sisters had taken the Seymours to the brink of ruin, and he would make both Jane and Elizabeth do the heavy lifting to haul the family back from the edge. They would all be held hostage by Cromwell's sparse good will until Jane had a son. Edward did not dare contemplate their fates if another princess were added to the nursery.

"Out! All of you! Out! Out!" Edward snapped his fingers and clapped his hands. Jane's ladies clucked past him like chickens flying the coop. He caught hold of Elizabeth's fur sleeve. "You stay."

He waited until the last rustle of petticoats had swept behind the door before starting in on his sisters. "Just two stupid sluts, just two foolish pigs! And don't you roll you eyes at me, Lissie! If you had respected your betters, we would not be in this position."

"What position?" Jane demanded. "It was you who coached me to win the king. It was you who wanted to anchor Cromwell to our family. So, if you are tossing and turning in the bed you've made for yourself…" It was the first time Elizabeth had ever heard Jane raise her voice to Edward. He ripped his feathered hat off, only to push it back on his head.

Emboldened by Jane, Elizabeth could not resist. "Indeed Edward. God only knows how you would have advanced if you had been stuck with ugly sisters," she observed.

"To hell with both of you! Listen: I'm in to see the king and his black badger! And after I am finished licking Cromwell's boot, sweet sister, when I emerge, I expect to be this year's nominee to Knight of the Garter, and I expect to be uncle to the next Prince of Wales." He shoved his face nose to nose with Jane. "And if I am not named as Lord Protector, I will know who to blame! So, if you will excuse me, ladies, I must now go attempt regain our position."

After he thundered out, after the door slammed behind him, Elizabeth turned to Jane. "You haven't told him, have you?"

As usual, the king's black badger sat at his right hand as the Privy Council called itself to order. Cromwell flicked his eyebrows up in greeting to Edward, and Edward grumbled some sort of incoherent greeting back. He felt everything at once for Cromwell: admiration, revulsion, envy, and a nagging fascination. It wasn't only because Anne was passing her dangerous German books onto Edward—and he could not say he disagreed with their subversive ideas. It was the fact that Cromwell did everything just a little better than anyone else. He spoke more languages, more fluently than anyone else on the council. Cromwell was the better archer, rider, writer, minister. Ever a study in contrasts, Cromwell nestled his stark white neck into his black, plush robe. His thick brows knitted together to form an expression of fixed amusement—which Edward suspected was at everyone's expense. Cromwell's pen poised above the page as Henry prepared to address his councilors. Edward wanted skin that black badger alive, but he also wanted to ask Cromwell how he made everything look so…easy.

"My lords," Henry began. He swung himself out of his chair to better admire his good leg. "My lords, as you know, there has been a vacancy within the Order of the Garter. This morning, I put to you my nominee."

Edward sat up a little straighter. Please, he prayed, please do not let it go Francis Bryan.

"Or, I should say, my beautiful queen put to me her nominee, one of her own kin.." Henry paused to allow some expected, muffled laughter. "And as my virtuous, golden queen is carrying the next king of England, I did not think it wise to disagree with her." Henry glanced around the table to make sure everyone was as pleased with the suspense as he was.

Edward fidgeted with the feather in his hat. He owed Jane an apology: she had come through for him. Which did not make up for mayhem she and Elizabeth had caused, but this was a start.

"My queen came to me and said, 'make this man Lord Protector over our son.' And I said, 'Sweetheart, are you wishing me dead already?'"

Edward laughed politely with everyone else. He hoped his brother, Tom, would not be too jealous of honors about to be heaped on Edward. Likewise, he hoped Cromwell was being eaten inside-out with envy. He glanced to see if Cromwell had his politician smile in place. True to form, Cromwell was laughing and nodding along with everyone else.

"My sweet queen begged me, said, 'this man is now the pillar of my family, without which, we would be nowhere.' And, my lords, my queen is quite correct. This man has done so much for England. His tireless efforts on behalf of our majesties—oh, Cromwell, are you getting all of this?"

Edward allowed himself to blush a little, but straightened his shoulders as Henry continued.

"Where was I? Ah, yes, his selfless devotion to our majesties goes to the heart of an albeit unconventional chivalry. Which is why I now make Lord Cromwell a Knight of the Garter."

ii.

Hans Holbein began work on the nursery within hours of receiving his commission. He had tried to show Cromwell the preliminary sketches, but his patron would not look at them, saying that no one had better instinct than Master Holbein. Graciously, Hans had left Elizabeth a small patch of creamy yellow wall. "Fill it in as you wish," he told her. "It will give you something to do when you are cooped up."

Tonight, she sat before that empty patch of wall, filling in leaves and flowers with her brush. She sat on a pillow, barefoot and cross-legged, no better than a farmer's wife. She'd spent every night in the nursery since her return from York. These four walls were now her favorite room, come to think of it her only room. Even though Cromwell had been sequestering himself in his offices, his presence suffused every breath Elizabeth drew in their apartments. He left the smell of his soap on their sheets, and the cloves and sandalwood trailed after him as he walked down the halls.

The only time she really ever spoke with her husband these days was over supper; most of the time, she tried to sit down with Jane and eat with the rest of the court. However, on the nights when Henry wanted to dine privately with his queen, Elizabeth had no choice but to share a table with Cromwell. The only way either of them could get through those evenings was to be excruciatingly polite to one another. Their mutual courtesy was so sickeningly sweet that it made Elizabeth's teeth ache just to think about it. _How do you like the trout? Oh, it's lovely. _

Some nights, she woke up crying, shivering from dreams filled with swinging corpses and the choked gasps of the dying. On those nights, Cromwell's hands would reach out for her. Through the dark, he would wipe away her tears and gather her against his chest. "You are still my little dove, I still love you," he'd say.

She'd just started on the lily pads when a few cautious footsteps told her she was not alone.

"Looks well, I think," Cromwell said. He cleared his throat a few times as he waited for her to respond. The silence had to stretch into a minute before he tried again. "So…how is our little scamp doing in there?"

"I haven't felt anything move in me, if that's what you're asking."

Cromwell's steps started to turn around, and Elizabeth let out the breath she was holding. Unfortunately, his polished black boots changed course and circled back to her.

"So…," he cleared his throat again. "Have you given any thought to names for the baby?"

"It's a little early for that, don't you think?"

"There would be no harm in it." His voice grew soft. He shifted his feet, but did not leave. "I have good news."

"Good for who?" It came out harsher than Elizabeth meant it. "Congratulations on your new knighthood, I meant."

Cromwell cocked his head, but remained stubbornly cheerful. "My niece, Catherine, had her baby. A healthy girl."

At that, Elizabeth had to turn around. She'd never heard his voice tilt like that: warm, almost proud. "Thanks be to God that mother and child are well." Elizabeth crossed herself. She didn't know why; the things she's seen had led her to wonder what kind of God would allow so much savagery and suffering.

A smile flashed across Cromwell's mouth. Quick as lightening, it was gone. "Anyway, Kit asked me if she might name her baby, Grace, after my—" he shut his eyes and did not complete the thought. He gulped down a mouthful of air. "Well the point of all this," Cromwell finished brusquely, "is that Kit's baby is to be Christened two days from now. I should like you to be in attendance."

"And I should like to meet your family and see your London houses," Elizabeth said carefully. Actually, the idea of spending a day surrounded by Lutheran merchants and new money was so terrifying it made her throat close.

Cromwell hesitantly started to leave again, but he turned around so that he stood even closer. "Which do you hope for?" he asked eagerly. "A boy or girl?"

Her stomach clenched and burned, and her mouth went dry. Her good humor broke in two. "Now why in God's name would I _want_ to bring a girl into this sort of world?" she spat. "So she can be chattel?"

Cromwell blanched and did the little sideways glance he did whenever he tried to make sense of an unexpected situation. He rocked back and forth on his heels, contemplating retreat.

He remained, but chose not to engage. "Lissie, I bought a present for you today," he said brightly. He took another step towards her, so close his thighs almost brushed her head. "I was going to save it until the child quickened. But maybe it will cheer you up tonight."

"Thank you," she mumbled. Elizabeth hunched closer to the wall, slouching her shoulders away from him.

"Don't you want to know what it is?" he prodded. She wanted to tell him that he did not give presents, he gave favors. And when Thomas Cromwell did you a favor, it was never for free. Instead, she put down her brushes and palette, and she stood, so he would not tower over her. Cromwell squared his shoulders, and smiled, clearly pleased that he had gotten even this much reaction from her.

"Close your eyes," he said. "No peeking."

Elizabeth sighed heavily and did as she was told. She felt something cool, round, and smooth being pressed into her palm. When she opened her eyes, it was to discover a ruby the size of a quail's egg. She handed it back to him as quickly as she could.

"It's too dear, too expensive. Thank you, though," she said weakly.

"You do not like it?" Cromwell sounded too amazed to be hurt. He turned to gem over and over, squinting at every angle of the stone and looking for the flaw that made the ruby unacceptable to Elizabeth.

"I just have so many jewels, half of which I never wear," she tried to explain. "Perhaps it could be put to better uses…to buy grain and medicine for the poor." She squeezed his arm. She supposed he was trying the best he knew how. "Thank you, all the same." She turned around to resume her painting, but he caught her hand.

"But, I thought you liked my presents," he said plaintively. "We could order you more gowns," he offered. "I can take you to the silk merchants, and you could order new gowns—"

"I'd just assume re-cut some of my older dresses." Elizabeth tried to pull her hand back.

"But you have not ordered anything new, not since you returned from—" Cromwell stopped himself. The unsaid word dangled between them. York. She had not ordered any dresses or jewels since Robert Aske's execution.

Elizabeth took her hand back, clasping one with the other. She wrung the cotton of her nightdress like a shamed child. "It's just that things like fashion and jewelry don't seem terribly important anymore."

iii.

Almost a year ago, Mark Smeaton had arrived at Cromwell's house in Stepney with his fiddle under his arm. By some accounts, he'd left the house blinded, and a servant had to clean the popped eyeball off of a Persian rug. But, the screams and the blood of yesteryear had been cleared away to make way for hundreds of London's most prominent citizens, who crammed inside the great hall to pay court—or just a bribe—to Lord Cromwell.

Elizabeth barely had one foot out of the barge and on dry land before she was pulled in ten directions at once. Richly dressed merchants wanted to kiss the hand of the queen's sister. Their wives gasped over the size of the diamonds that Cromwell insisted she wear. Shy, young girls offered her posies of flowers and curtsied deeply. Heady talk about religion, reform, and trade swirled around her head. She could only walk a few feet at a time before being encircled by another curious throng. They threw questions at her so fast it made her head spin: what was the queen's policy towards an Imperial alliance? Did the queen support expanded trade routes through the North Sea? The Mediterranean? Did the queen support a debasement or a strengthening of the coinage? Elizabeth was not sure how to explain that Jane liked needlepoint and could barely read and write.

She was actually relieved when she found Cromwell, tucked in a corner, holding court before a small army of bankers, lawyers, and merchants. He stretched out his hand for her, and she had to elbow her way through a wall of velvet jackets to get to him. She only caught the tail end of the exchange.

"Cromwell, it's a prudent idea, but that bill will never make it out of Parliament alive," said one chubby merchant. He was stuffed so tightly into his pastel velvet that he looked like a fruit pastry.

"It's common sense," Cromwell shrugged. " I do not see why the king would not support the notion. We hire out any common man who says he cannot support his family, and then we put him to work and pay him an honest wage. If any among them are drunks or faking their infirmities, the law will prosecute them."

"You've been spending too much time at court if you think nobles like Suffolk and Norfolk will let one schilling of the royal treasury go towards the common man. They would prefer it if the poor were still dependant on the abbeys and trapped by the abuses of the church," insisted Sir Fruit Pastry. "Certainly the queen must have some sort of position on the Poor Laws." The man looked at Elizabeth over his punch glass. Truth be told, the last time Jane tried to show any interest in national policy, Henry reminded her what happened to the last queen who meddled in his affairs. Instead, he preferred Jane to be on her knees in prayer for hours at a time, praying for a son.

"Her majesty prefers a life of spiritual devotion, not one of politics," Elizabeth replied carefully. Then, she immediately regretted bringing up religion in this company.

"It is said the queen favors restoration of the old religion," the man continued. "But what of you, surely our Lord Cromwell has made an evangelical out you by now?"

Elizabeth sweated under the weight of dozens of stares. She looked to Cromwell for help, but he just raised an eyebrow, waiting for whatever answer she would give. She took a swig out of her punch glass.

"Well, you see, sir, it's just that my sister takes comfort in the religion that we were raised in. And I've never been terribly theological, myself. But, the things I have seen—the terrible bloodletting in the North—has led me to think that no one is receiving our prayers. Be they in English, Latin, or German." The corner of the room went incredibly quiet.

"But surely, Lissie, what you meant to say, is that…," Cromwell mounted a rescue.

The fat man just hooted with laughter. "Ha! How is that for blasphemy this early in the morning? And we have not yet sat down to breakfast! Cromwell, what have you been doing hiding her at Whitehall for all these months? She is excellent company, but somebody do get this girl another glass of punch, lest she open her mouth and let slip something that will burn her at the stake!"

The conversation shifted back to safe topics like exchange rates and marriages and births. On the pretext of getting herself that glass of punch that would rescue her from another blaspheme, Elizabeth backed along the wall until her hand made contact with a door knob. Not caring where the door took her, as long as it was away from questions of God and state, she opened the door and fell behind it. Her sanctuary was a massive storeroom filled with bolts of cloth in colors she did not even know were possible.

"I don't suppose you like crowds either," said a voice.

Elizabeth whipped her head around to find a young man tucked behind some of the bolts of cloth. He was a few years younger than her and wore the sober black robes of a scholar. But, his lush eyes sparkled behind thick lashes. She'd seen eyes like that before.

"Gregory?" she asked. She took a few tentative steps forward. "Gregory?"

He flushed a little. "I did not think you would know me. But, I recognized you. My father once showed me a miniature portrait of you."

"He did?" Elizabeth was shocked. She tried to remember the last time she'd sat for a portrait.

"He asked, 'what do you think of her?' And, I was silly enough to think that he was soliciting me to marry you." Gregory tried to laugh it off. He had such a soft voice and warm smile, Elizabeth had to wonder how he'd survived with Cromwell for all these years. "You're different then I had conjured you. You seem younger, sweeter."

"Not the jaded treasure-hunter you were hoping for?"

"No," Gregory laughed, this time for real. "No, I suppose not. It's my fault we have not met." His eyes grew shiny and wide. "You see, my father did not marry for so long after my mother died, that I took it for granted it would always be just us bachelors. Naturally, when I heard about you, I thought you meant to pounce on his fortune and replace my mother."

"You're still his heir, Gregory," Elizabeth said gently. She did not add that not a schilling had come into her hands since Master Aske had been arrested. Cromwell made her give him the names of her debtors, and he paid them directly.

They ended up spending an hour hiding in that room together. As they sat on the floor, shelling the walnuts that Gregory had hid in his pockets, Elizabeth asked, "So, what's your excuse for hiding in here? I have a terrible habit of saying what I am actually thinking, but what's your excuse?"

"My father is brilliant at everything; I imagine I must come as a terrible disappointment for most people," Gregory shrugged. "People always ask me about him, but he's a difficult man to know—as I'm sure you've figured out for yourself."

"I can't seem to add him up," Elizabeth said softly. "Every time I think I have him pegged for one way, he reverses course and goes another."

Gregory swept the walnut shells into a tidy pile. "He used to be different, back before my mother and my sisters died. After he lost them, he turned dark. He once said that my mother was the first person to ever love him in his entire life." A pensive silence fell between them. Gregory broke it when he stood and offered her his hand. "Well, I expect you want to see the new baby. I should warn you about my cousin, Kit. She's used to being the only lady of the Cromwell house. Just let her know that you're not a threat, and she'll warm to you."

Kit was holding a sort of court of her own in the nursery. She sat on a daybed, flanked by her uncle and her cousin, Richard. A nurse came bustling in with a lacey bundle in her arms. A short cry burst out of the baby, which changed into a coo as soon as she was in her mother's arms.

"Well done, Kit," Cromwell grinned. "I know she will do her name proud." He gently loaded the baby into his arms.

Elizabeth edged against the frescoed wall; she didn't want to break the spell. Some knight must have kissed some sleeping princess because for one, two moments, an enchantment had been lifted. Cromwell seemed less…black. As Kit's baby was lost in the puff of Cromwell's fur sleeve, the severity of his face melted. A tiny foot kicked out, and Cromwell caught it between his thumb and forefinger. He measured Baby Grace's foot against the palm of his hand.

"I had forgotten," he murmured to no one in particular. "I had forgotten how very small babies are."

Unfortunately, Elizabeth stepped on the creakiest floorboard in the room and half a dozen black, Cromwellian eyes trained on her. Richard's broad face attempted a lopsided smile, but Kit just folded her arms across her still swollen belly. She wore the ruby brooch that Elizabeth turned down, and the black fire in her eyes told Elizabeth that Kit knew the jewel was a hand-me-down. Gregory just blushed furiously and became very interested in the pattern of the Persian rug beneath his feet.

"Here, Lissie," Cromwell said. "Why don't you come over and make a fuss of our little Grace Frances?" He pressed the small, warm bundle against her. Now was probably not the time to announce to the room that she had never held a baby before, so she held out her arms, ready for an offering.

"Oh, not like that," Cromwell huffed. "Bend your elbow like so. You have to support her head." He eased the infant into the crook of her arm. The baby's weight was small, but satisfying. Grace gurgled, but to Elizabeth's relief, the infant did not start crying. A miniature tongue peeked out between Grace's lips.

"She's beautiful," Elizabeth said. Grace's features were pink and strained, yet oddly miraculous.

"Well, her looks are certainly of no credit to her father," Kit snorted.

Cromwell threw a scolding glance at his niece. "You asked me to find you the richest husband I could, and I did. He spends most of his time in the Netherlands at the cloth fairs; Kit, you have no cause for complaint."

Baby Grace squirmed in Elizabeth's arms. What if she slips from my grasp, Elizabeth thought. Gregory must have seen a few panicked beads of sweat sneak from beneath Elizabeth's hood, because he folded little Grace into his arms. As soon as he did, Elizabeth's arms ached to hold Grace again.

"To think we all started life this small," Gregory murmured.

"You did. When you were born, you were actually smaller than your sisters." Cromwell smiled distantly at the memory. His face softened, and the lines , which seemed so deeply etched around his mouth and eyes, momentarily disappeared. Elizabeth thought that if anyone were to see Cromwell right at this moment, they would not think him so harsh after all. Perhaps reading her thoughts, Cromwell caught her studying him. He narrowed his eyes and set his jaw into the familiar scowl.

Late that night, Elizabeth dreamed of fruit pastries and walnut trees. When she woke up, she saw that Cromwell's side of the bed was completely undisturbed. Had he never come back from Stepney? Was he in his offices? Was he visiting another woman? Elizabeth tried to tell herself that she did not care what he did when he was away. Still, she found herself getting out of bed, tucking her feet into her slippers, and going to look for him in his study.

She could see candlelight under the heavy door. She pushed it open with a simultaneous knock, but the room was empty. The desk was littered with correspondence as usual. One draft caught her eye in particular. The surname was Roper, which sounded familiar. Then she remembered: Meg Roper, formerly Meg More. Next to the letter was another piece of paper. It was divided into two neat columns: one side contained girls' names and the other wide was filled with boys' names.

"Lissie, what are you doing in here?" Cromwell sounded more surprised than accusatory.

She took a moment to catch her breath from the startle. "I saw the light from under the door. I thought you might be in here."

"I left to get more ink. Is something wrong?"

"No, I just couldn't find you." Why was she here, come to think of it? Cromwell cleared some papers from a chair opposite his. He gestured for her to sit.

"Here." He tossed a stack of letters towards her. "You can sort these by the date received."

Elizabeth did not remember offering her services as a clerk, but she was curious about the letter from Thomas More's daughter. She took a seat and started sorting. People all over England were writing to Cromwell for help, trusting him with all sorts of embarrassing family secrets. Maybe people could tell things to the son of a blacksmith that they could never say to a lord.

"I never took you for the sort to fawn over a baby," Elizabeth said after a while.

"What's not to like about them? Babies don't care if you were born into a dukedom or a brothel. All that matters to them is that you're gentle and mean them well; they will love you for that alone." In the soft candlelight, Cromwell looked years younger.

"Why did Thomas More's daughter write to you?" she asked over the shuffling of papers. The question was burning her up.

"Because she's having a new baby and she desperately needs money, but she's too embarrassed to come out and say so," Cromwell said simply and sat back in his chair.

"Is she asking for blood money? Guilt money?"

"Why should I feel guilty? More took his own head off. That kind of conviction…,"Cromwell's voice trailed off. "That kind of conviction is not conviction. It's…I don't know…vanity. If he'd had as much care for his family as he did for his Pope, then they would not be in the sorry shape they're in." He toyed with his emerald ring. "People say, 'that Thomas Cromwell, he's nothing but avarice and ambition, a crooked dealer, and that Thomas More, he was a virtuous man of principle.' Well, you don't see my family reduced to begging off money, do you? I was born poor, and I cannot afford Thomas More's virtue. When the Cardinal fell, I had my son and my sisters' children to provide for, and I'll be damned if I was going down with Wolsey."

He sounded almost…wounded. Elizabeth would never have guessed that Cromwell ever cared what people thought of him. She handed the organized stack of papers back to Cromwell.

"What was that man talking about today? About the Poor Laws?"

"He's right, that bill will never get out of Parliament alive," Cromwell muttered. "Your brothers are opposed to it."

"They're probably just upset they didn't come up with the idea first. Is it your intention to court the affections of the commons, after the Northern rebellion?"

Cromwell did not exactly answer her. "So many common men are without work. Some on account of drink, others on account of infirmity. But the real tragedy is when a man cannot work for lack of opportunity."

"Is that what happened to your father?" she asked gently.

Cromwell snorted with barely contained amusement. "Walter? God, no. Walter was perpetually drunk. But he could still shoe a horse, even when he was drunk. So, I suppose he was not entirely without prospect."

iv.

The prior May Day had been understandably sobered by the arrest Queen Anne and her gentleman. This year's May Day did not look terribly promising either. Black, swollen thunderheads rolled over the palace. Jane was slow to rise that morning, and the courtiers, who had gathered to sing under her window, finally gave up and dispersed into the gardens. Elizabeth wondered if she ought to say something solemn to mark the occasion, acknowledge that neither of them could have imagined they would have ended up here today. A year ago, Queen Anne had strutted out onto the green wearing a creamy yellow dress and a fearless smile. But Cromwell had been stalking around the perimeters, and he was ready to place a bet. To think that she'd thought that she was on the edge of a golden world.

At the joust, Elizabeth stood behind Jane in the royal box. The day had warmed up, although the sun never came out. She was damp with sweat as she fetched Jane water. Elizabeth's back ached with the growing weight of the child, but she tried to smile and offer her favor to the jousters. Discreetly, she leaned against the back of Jane's chair to take some of the strain off her back.

"Jane, look: there's Tom. Doesn't he look fine?" Elizabeth pointed out their brother, already mounted and waving to the crowd with a toothy grin. Jane gave a little mmm-hmmm in acknowledgment, but she didn't seem to be paying attention to the joust. Her blue-green eyes fixed on a determinate spot right in front of her.

"Lissie!" Henry's voice cracked through the air like a whip. Elizabeth straightened immediately. "You certainly seem to be thriving. Come here so we may have a look at you." He crooked his finger.

The belly poking out from under her bodice was more than a little obvious as she sank into her curtsey. Henry's eyes roved over her like he was considering the cost of a prize pig. His look sharpened when his gaze came to rest on her burgeoning belly.

"My lords, is she not radiant? I ask my queen, 'are you not eating, shouldn't you be round as a Welsh pony, like your sister?'" Henry smirked at his own joke. Jane just looked at her shoes. "The ambassadors at court, they write in their dispatches that the queen's own sister eclipses her in fertility."

"Your Majesty, it is still early months yet for my sister," Elizabeth spoke up. She started to straighten, but the harsh look Henry threw at her told her that she'd best remain sunk in her curtsey. Briefly, she wished that Cromwell were there to diffuse the situation. But he was somewhere with Archbishop Cranmer, probably holding a vigil for their dead queen.

Henry jerked his head to indicate that she was dismissed. Relieved, Elizabeth tucked herself behind Jane's chair. She gently blotted away the sweat that was pouring down Jane's neck. From her vantage point, she finally realized what Jane had been staring at all along. The embroidered cloth draped over the royal box had the initials of H and J sewn into the fabric. But one patch had been missed and still contained the fateful letters H.A. Henry and Anne. HA. Ha-ha. Elizabeth thought, that's some joke. Jane's shoulders tensed and her breathing quickened.

"I'm not well!" Jane bolted upright and left the royal box without first seeking a dismissal. Elizabeth turned and hurried after her. Henry held up his hand to stop a mass exodus of petticoats.

"Ladies, ladies, do stay and enjoy the jousts," Henry crowed. "Why, Lady Misseldon, come sit closer to me."

Back in Jane's bedchamber, Elizabeth pulled off Jane's shoes. She eased her sister's legs over onto the bed. Jane just blinked and said nothing as Elizabeth bathed her face in cold lavender water. After a while, she said: "I didn't know any better."

"Of course you did. Our mother taught us to never leave the presence of our betters without a curtsey." Elizabeth tried to pretend they were talking about Jane's sudden exit.

"Men never ran after me, not the way they tripped over you," Jane continued. She stared at the canopy of her bed. "When the king kissed me, I did not know any better. I was blinded…I'd never been kissed before. When the king of England kisses you, what else can you do but kiss him back? I was dazzled by him."

"He fell in love with you, Jane, you should not blame yourself for that." She kicked her own shoes off and curled up next to Jane. "Soon we will both be fat as Welsh ponies, and you will give the king a healthy son."

"What if I lose the child? What if it's still-born? Or a girl? What then?" Jane laughed ruefully. "Cromwell would protect you, but I'm sure he could have another queen up his sleeve at a moment's notice.

"I may be skating on some thin ice myself. The king won't take kindly another cousin circling the throne. Just look at the Poles," Elizabeth sighed.

They rested their heads together, trying to come to grips with the fact that their lives were no longer their own.

v.

The ghost of Anne Boleyn was behind every corner, every tapestry. To escape it, Jane suggested a picnic out in the gardens, so everyone would have an excuse to laugh, gossip, and not contemplate where they were a year ago when the cannon salute rang through London, announcing the decapitation of Anne. For the whole of the entire week, Archbishop Cranmer looked like he was even closer to tears than usual. He'd tell anyone who would listen that Queen Anne's hands did not even tremble when she took her jewelry off to make way for the blade.

On the night of May 19th, Elizabeth pulled up a chair next to the fire and buried her head in a book. She'd turned twenty-three a few weeks ago, and for her birthday, Cromwell had given her a volume of richly illustrated books. Cromwell being Cromwell, he had included a copy of the Gospels in English. Elizabeth wasn't so sure she cared if popes and saints were or were not in the Bible. Tonight, she curled up with the tales of King Arthur and his knights.

She was studying an illustration of Lancelot and Guinevere when she felt it. A flutter, then a small jab inside of her. Her hands flew to her stomach. Another small movement. She felt as though she'd swallowed a butterfly and it was now gently flapping inside of her. She looked around, wanting someone to tell. For better or worse, her rooms were empty, and the only other person who would be around at this late hour would be Cromwell. He was predictably at his desk in his private study.

She stuck her face around the door. "I felt the baby move. It was light as a feather, but I felt it."

At that, he put his quill down. He came to her and knelt, resting his cheek and his hands on her stomach. The thing about Cromwell was that when he really smiled, it was with his eyes and not with his mouth.

"I felt something," he whispered. Carefully, he pushed the hem of her nightgown up over hips so he could kiss the bare skin of her belly. He leaned his black curls against her. Elizabeth's hand hovered for a moment before her fingers finally wound through his hair. She felt something towards him at that moment, but she wasn't sure what. It was difficult to despise a man when his was clinging to her waist and kissing her navel.

"You loved me for a short while, back in December," he said against her skin. "Maybe it could be so again."

She didn't know what to say, so she sank to her own knees. Slowly, almost shyly, he pressed his lips to hers. The kiss was warm, dry, not demanding, and it was difficult not to yield to it. She helped him loosen the ties of her nightshift, and it tumbled down her shoulders to settle around her waist. He lightly stroked her breasts, mindful that they were swollen and sore. She eased herself onto her back as his lips traveled down past her navel to her thighs. Elizabeth highly doubted that Queen Guinevere ever found herself naked and legs spread on a carpet with King Arthur's tongue between her thighs.

Cromwell's dark robes made a warm, comforting tent as he positioned himself over her. "It's been so long, it seems like an eternity since the last time we were together," he whispered into her hair. He was gentle as he pushed into her, careful to keep most of his weight in his elbows. She nestled her chin over his shoulder, thinking that he felt _familiar_, and she wondered why that was so.

Afterwards, she lay wrapped in his thick robes, resting her head on his chest. Enveloped by him, it was difficult not to contemplate how she went from being interrogated by Cromwell to carrying his child.

"I was terrified of you," she said into the silence. "I was terrified of you in that room, the night you hauled Anne's maids in for questioning."

He pulled her closer. "Well, you certainly needn't be now."

It was just like Cromwell's backward logic to think that marrying a woman actually gave him less license to treat her as he wished. "You've never struck me since that night," she said and stifled a bitter smile. "Might have waited until we were married, at least it would have been legal that way."

He shifted uncomfortably against her. She could almost hear his lawyer's brain clicking away, parsing the language, adding up the elements of the claim. In his precise mind, he probably thought he'd never technically struck her.

"If I have ever hurt you…it was not what I wanted," he said finally. Elizabeth realized that was the closest thing to an apology she would ever get from Cromwell. He cleared his throat. "And it was not my idea to kill Anne Boleyn. The king wanted her dead, I just wanted her out of the way."

Elizabeth shivered. She pulled the robes tightly around her. "Then why did you invent such outlandish lies about her?"

"So, I would know," he said simply. "So I would know that deep down the king knew that she was innocent of the charges, that he was putting to death an innocent woman."

It was the sort of truth that didn't make anything easier or simpler. If Anne and the other doomed men were floating above, the sentiment was probably small comfort.

Her head lolled on his shoulder. "Jane's afraid," she admitted.

"In her position, she should be."


	17. Chapter 17

**A/N: I don't know the source of the quote 'if a woman were to tell the truth about her life, the whole world would split open.' Needless to say, I did not come up with something so profound. **

** Pandora: I promise no twisted Edward Seymour sadism in this chapter. I make no warranties for the rest of the story.**

** Griffin: This chapter is for you.**

** For the rest of my awesome reviewers: So sorry about the late update. I had awful writers block and other school papers to write. **

Mercifully, it was a mild summer. When the sun weighed too heavy in the sky, afternoon rains arrived to cool off London. The court remained at Whitehall because Henry feared even the slightest movement might dislodge his Prince Edward from Jane's womb. In fact, Henry fretted that any excitement or sudden movement might jeopardize his heir. No masques, no late night dances, no suggestive poetry.

In the antiseptic cloud that overcame Whitehall, Elizabeth played cards with the other free spirits and libertines who were unwelcome in the new order of modesty and downcast looks. Francis Bryan and Thomas Wyatt moved the carved table close to the window, so the gamblers could catch the breeze that came in with the dusk. Ursula shuffled and dealt the cards in order of rank, first to Elizabeth, then to Tom Seymour, and finally to Wyatt and Francis. She made a point of dealing Francis' cards last.

"What, sweetheart?" Francis scoffed. "Hard feelings? You left my bed as I recall."

"That does not mean I enjoy being replaced by Anne Stanhope," Ursula replied.

"Oh, Edward doesn't mind!" Tom cheerfully threw down his losing hand and shrugged off the money.

Elizabeth pulled a card from the remaining stack. "Believe me, Tom," she said pointedly. "Edward minds a great deal. Francis, if you would be a little discreet in the matter…" She balanced her cards on her big belly.

"What? I'm to blame because Edward Seymour has been made a cuckold twice over?" Francis held his hand to heart, aghast that anyone would suggest he was the sort of man to tempt a married woman away from her husband.

"How do you manage it?" Wyatt tugged at his disheveled curls, contemplating the next card to throw down. "She's the most unpleasant woman at court. Puffy face, lips thin as fish bones. I couldn't write her a sonnet if my life depended upon it."

"Careful, Sir Thomas. Edward may take you up on that challenge," Ursula cautioned. She knew just as well as everyone else about the rumors seeping out of the Tower: Edward had taken a keen interest in…administering the king's justice.

Wyatt shook his blond hair. "What? Lord Cromwell arrest me twice? He would hate the paperwork." He frowned at his losing cards and smacked them down on the table.

Elizabeth felt a tug in her stomach, a need to say something on Cromwell's behalf. She could not say why. After all, she had just as much cause to hate him as anyone else. She'd been on the wrong side of Cromwell enough, felt the sting of his cruelty, his ruthlessness. But there were other things, things she could never tell anyone at this table. How could she explain to them that the baby inside her kicked when Cromwell put his hands on her stomach and whispered "good night" and "good morning" to the baby? That he fell asleep every night with his arms around her belly?

"Speaking of which, how are things in the Kingdom of Cromwell?" Ursula asked. She snatched up a card that Elizabeth had tossed.

"Quiet, I suppose. With the North thrown down, he's mostly occupied with passing the Poor Laws through Parliament." She leveled a look at Tom and Francis. "Which would be easier if you both would support it." Elizabeth bet another token. Cromwell still refused to give her cash in hand because of the mischief with Robert Aske. Instead, she had to use tokens in her gambling that could only be redeemed for coin upon presentation to Cromwell himself.

"Things between you both are well, then?" Ursula asked tactfully.

"He's…softer. Maybe it's the baby. Maybe it's the fact that I can't get myself into too much trouble when I am big as a whale." Elizabeth gave up her hand and flipped her cards over.

"There's also the small matter of Robert Aske, the old church. Cromwell's eliminated everything that stood between you both. I don't doubt he's the happier for it," Wyatt muttered.

"I've said it once, and I will say it again: I would rather have Cromwell for an enemy than a friend. At least you know for sure where you stand with him," Tom said in a rare moment of insight.

"You all realize that I am sitting right here?" Elizabeth huffed. She pushed herself up from the table with little grace. "I'm for my bed. I find myself tired by defending my husband to this crowd, of all people."

Trying to walk through the great audience hall was like a dance Elizabeth could not leave. Every few paces, some well meaning courtier placed herself in front of Elizabeth's domed front. Before she could even squeak in protest, strange hands cupped her belly. Worse than the physical invasion were the questions. When would she go into confinement? Was it a boy? A girl (their condolences). Did she want to hear about a cousin's nightmare labor that went on for three days?

Fortunately, the only inquisitive gaze on Elizabeth's belly tonight belonged to Mary Tudor. Elizabeth managed the deepest curtsey she could for the princess. But once she sank down, she struggled to right herself back up again.

Mary's sad, brown eyes sparkled. "Oh, you must not distress yourself with that, Lissie. Not in your condition." Mary offered an ivory hand to Elizabeth, which she took gladly and pulled herself to standing again.

"Will you not be attending her Majesty tonight?" Mary asked her.

"No, the queen insists that I am off my feet and in my bed by sunset. And I am of little use to her when I can only waddle and my fingers are too bloated to sew."

Mary burst out laughing in spite of herself. She covered her mouth with a bejeweled hand. "Indeed! Good night to you, Lissie."

"And to you, Lady Mary." Elizabeth turned to leave, but Mary hesitated, her dark eyes resting on Elizabeth's stomach.

"Lissie, you wouldn't suppose, I mean you don't think that Lord Cromwell would mind very much…may, may I?" Mary reached out her hands towards Elizabeth's belly. Gently, she took Mary's hands in hers and pressed them to her stomach. The baby shifted.

"I felt it! I felt it move!" In that instant, Mary's pale face brightened, and she looked like the girl she was. Not the serious woman she'd been forced to become. But, her smile fell, and her brown eyes turned thoughtful.

Elizabeth read her thoughts well enough. "Soon enough my lady, soon enough we will be celebrating your own marriage, your own births."

"I fear not," Mary whispered. She regained her steely composure. "Good night to you, Lissie." Mary turned, flicking the black train of her gown behind her. Elizabeth had never seen Mary in anything other than black, brown or grey. What is it like, Elizabeth thought, to be in perpetual mourning for a wedding that will never be and children that exist only in dreams?

After Elizabeth changed into her nightshift-with the considerable assistance of her maids-she shuffled down the hall to Cromwell's study. She'd started sitting up with him at night, sorting his letters or drafting responses. It had turned into a habit, but she still made excuses for knocking on his study. Tonight, she held a pitcher of cider.

She poked her head around the cracked door. He must have left it open for her.

"I thought you might be thirsty. I brought cider."

Cromwell glanced up from the stacks of letters and seals. "I wondered if you might come tonight." He raised both his thick brows, which meant he was amused, but pleasantly so. He gestured for her to sit next to him. Elizabeth noticed that he already had a chair conveniently placed beside him and conveniently cleared of papers.

She poured them both a cup of cider. They caught one another's eye as the mug passed from Elizabeth's hand to Cromwell's. She felt as though they were in on a secret pact, only Elizabeth wasn't sure why it need be secret. Perhaps because she would never be able to explain the understanding that had grown between them. They had hurt one another and betrayed each other in ways that could never be forgiven. So they fell into a quiet alliance for a little bit of peace.

She eased herself into the chair. "I can't remember the last time I saw my feet. My toes could have fallen off, littered the Great Hall, and I wouldn't even know."

Gently, he lifted her calves and draped them across his lap. Elizabeth sighed with relief at the elevation of her feet. Sometimes they swelled so badly, she struggled to get her shoes on.

"Five toes on each foot. All ten accounted for, I assure you," Cromwell said. He pushed a stack of papers towards her. "Have a look at those. I seem to have become the patron saint of the aggrieved wives of England."

"And here I thought you were the hero of ambitious mistresses." Elizabeth used the curve of her stomach as a desk and stretched out the letter. She sniggered with so much contained amusement that letter bounced up and down. The duchess of Norfolk had written the son of a drunkard blacksmith to ask if he could make her husband return to her. Apparently, the most senior nobleman in England had taken his laundress for a lover.

"Explains why his Grace has been so scarce." Elizabeth grinned. "Quieter than Sir Anthony Knivert."

Cromwell indulged in a smile. "Any courtesan was his for the taking, but Norfolk chooses the laundry woman." Elizabeth imagined that part of Cromwell could not help but be pleased at another upstart defying convention and scaling the social ladder. The other letters were less delicious, but more poignant. Women from good families, families she knew, were writing to Cromwell for help. Some wanted to escape a bad marriage. Others begged for one more loan to ward off the bankruptcy brought upon them by gambling husbands.

"England's first minister, lawyer, banker. Now: viceregent of marital affairs. Thomas, is there anything you cannot do?"

Cromwell's thick eye-lashes brushed against his cheek, and then he looked up at her, a wolfish grin playing across his face, as if to say, No, there really isn't anything Thomas Cromwell cannot do.

"So, speaking of marriages," Elizabeth pursued carefully. "Shouldn't the Lady Mary be married already? Not just for advantage, but for her own sake?"

"Lissie," Cromwell sighed.

"Perhaps for your own sake as well?" Elizabeth said quickly. "She is so lonely, and she craves love, the kind of love she will not get until she has her own baby in her arms. Without love, a heart goes cold and jagged, full of spite. Believe me, her spite will fall on you, and not the king. Regardless of who is more to blame." She waited for a response, but none came. No sound but the grate of the quill against parchment.

"Have you given any more thought to names for the baby?" Cromwell broke the silence that had fallen between them.

"I read these letters and I think: if one of these women were to tell the truth about her life, the whole world would break apart. To bring a daughter into this world…" Elizabeth shook her head. Cromwell's eyes grew wide and glassy. She chided herself for opening her mouth. He had lost both his daughters, on the same afternoon no less. Did he ever worry that his own daughters might grow up and be mistreated by the husbands he chose for them? When he cradled his niece's new daughter, Cromwell seemed tender towards her sex, rather than indifferent.

Cromwell placed his quill in the ink well. "We are birds of a similar feather. We both flap our wings against the restraints around us, rattle the cage. We dream of open skies that we will probably never see." They shared a sad smile. He wanted a world in which a man's fortune depended on his skill and ambition, not his family name. She longed for a place where a woman could live her life exactly as she pleased. But, whoever gets what they want? Elizabeth reminded herself. The baby stirred in her and pushed a foot outwards.

"It makes things easier for us, if I bear a daughter, doesn't it?" Elizabeth said softly. "It's safer that way, I mean. If I have a son, and Jane does not, it will not go well for us. Or if, pray God, she gives England an heir, and I have a son…the king does not like cousins hovering around." She did not need to add: our king is suspicious and now he has gotten a taste for blood.

Cromwell placed both his hands on her stomach. A tiny foot—or fist—pressed back against his palm. "Do not think on that. Let me worry about that. You fix your worries on growing our bean sprout in there."

"Lucy and William," Elizabeth said. "I like the names Lucy and William."

II.

Thomas Cromwell served England. True, he had to use a cardinal and a queen as a vehicle for his service. And when each vessel failed him, he found another. But always, England led him on, or rather, the England that _could be_.

Yet, England receded into the back of his mind as he watched Henry appraise a prototype of an elaborate barge. Henry always needed to have another task at hand when he conferred with his first minister: chess, archery, eyeing up his next mistress. Such a low-born man did not warrant Henry Tudor's undivided attention.

"Have you dispatched Suffolk to the North?" Henry did not even look up from the gilded model. Thank God, because Cromwell knew his face was painted with the black satisfaction bought at another man's expense. Cromwell had summoned (summoned!) Suffolk to his offices. Without so much as a bow, or a "good morning your Grace," Cromwell casually tossed a letter of dispatch towards Charles Brandon.

"Yes, your Majesty," Cromwell replied blandly, as if it were no small thing for Wolsey's quietest clerk to rebuke the Duke of Suffolk.

"Hmmm. What did you say to him?" Henry prodded a miniature oar.

"I urged him as a true knight and sovereign lord, not to spare, but to frankly slay plenty of these false rebels. I said to him there was no need for courtesy in shedding the blood of traitors." Cromwell decided to skip the part where he told Charles Brandon to put on his breeches and merit the lofty title of duke.

"And?"

"The Emperor will shortly be dispatching an envoy with authority to discuss with your Majesty possible candidates for the hand of the Lady Mary." Cromwell beamed smugly at the thought of the French completely sidelined by an Imperial-English alliance. Reduced shipping rates. Access to German bankers. Maybe Mary would even stop sniveling for once.

"Hmm." Henry apparently had other things on his mind, more important than trade routes and banking. He waved Cromwell over. "What do you think of this? It's the Doge's ship."

Cromwell tilted his head at the plush reproduction. He did not need Henry to tell him what he was looking at. He had seen the real ship before. A brief memory washed over Cromwell: the salty smell of the jade lagoon and the byzantine, almost oriental San Marco. His throat lurched as he realized he would probably never see Venice again.

"When it is built, the queen will ride in it to her coronation," Henry continued.

" It will be a most memorable occasion indeed." And it will be vilely expensive. Cromwell smiled through tight lips. Already he was adding up the cost. Money thrown at a pretty boat for a country girl. Money that Cromwell had wanted to use to put Englishmen to work.

"Of course it will have to wait until after the birth of my son," Henry added. No Prince of Wales meant no coronation.

Henry caught sight of a pamphlet in Cromwell's hand. "What is that?"

Cromwell made his best coy face. He had learned long ago to bring things up incidentally to Henry, and then let the king think it was his idea all along. "It's a pamphlet widely distributed. Its author is Reginald Pole, who has recently been made a cardinal by the Bishop of Rome."

"A cardinal? What does it say?" Henry scoffed

"It condemns your Majesty in the vilest of terms." Cromwell let his eyes track sideways, trying his best to seem shy, like he might blush. This was how it was with Henry, do not tell him what you want: the mighty Pole family wiped off the face of Europe. Instead, lead Henry, beckon him. Anne Boleyn figured this out before Wolsey. To be honest, Cromwell learned it from Anne.

"As what?" He asked eagerly. Like all men of vanity, Henry craved unanimous adoration.

"As a heretic…," Cromwell gulped and paused for effect. "And…an…adulterer." He let the word hang in the air, right next to the stench of the king's open wound.

"So much for gratitude." Henry sucked in a wet breath between his teeth, more like a hiss. "I will rip out his tongue and feed his fingers to my hounds. Let us see how well he can slander then."

"Forgive me Majesty, but—"

"Oh, spare me!" The king's fragile humor cracked. " 'We cannot upset our relations with the Imperial merchants, we cannot sneeze else the Italian bankers will toss their gold into the sea,'" Henry mimicked. "Am I not sovereign? Reginald Pole is an English subject! I don't care if he is in Zanzibar! A fellow king should surrender a subject at the asking of another prince—"

"I only mean that we should take care of Cardinal Pole quietly, not make an international incident over it." Cromwell murmured. "We can take care of the Pole family outside of official channels, and Reginald is just the man to help us."

Henry smiled again. "Master Cromwell, I believe what you mean to say is that while Cardinal Pole prances around in his scarlet cloak, he will deliver the rest of the Plantagenets to us."

Cromwell did not respond. He allowed people to make of his silence what they would. Henry waved his hand, and Cromwell backed out of the room, slowly and reverentially. As soon the door of the presence chamber shut behind him, Cromwell straightened up and resumed his fast walk. He breezed through a throng of petitioners, calling his name and thrusting papers in his face. His clerks fell in behind him, a small army of black coats in Cromwell's wake. He lengthened his stride. He needed to get to the Tower fast and find out just what the hell Edward Seymour had been doing there.

He snapped his fingers and beckoned Ralph Sadler to his side. Ralph grabbed a few of the papers waved in his face as he made his way to Cromwell.

"Master Sadler." Cromwell pressed his mouth to Ralph's ear. "Hail us a boat to the Tower, quick as you can. We cannot risk alerting Edward Seymour. Don't let anyone know. Don't tell the oarsman who we are." Ralph nodded and dashed off. He did not need Cromwell to explain things out for him. He did not need Cromwell to come out and say, "We cannot take my official barge because there are still those in London who have their arrows trained every time they see my standard."

At the dockside, Cromwell handed off his chain of office to another of his clerks. Ever since the uprising in the North, he'd ordered every one of his servants to remove his coat of arms from their clothes; it was too dangerous to wear Cromwell's livery. He himself did not go into the city with anything that could identify him as anyone other than a well-to-do merchant.

Edward actually looked surprised to see Cromwell striding towards him across the Tower Green, with his red headed clerk in tow.

"Viscount Beachamp!" Cromwell called out merrily. "What a happy coincidence. Just this morning I thought to myself, now where is Lord Edward Seymour? He is not with the king, and certainly not attending the queen. And then I remembered: ah yes, he must be turning the rack of the king's justice at the Tower!"

Edward ran a hand through his greasy blonde hair. "What are you doing here, Cromwell?"

"I have every reason to be here, Edward. Perhaps I am checking on the Mint—our coinage is so strong these days, what with the abbey gold flowing into our coffers. Perhaps I am auditing the king's treasury. The better question is, what are you doing here, Edward? I believe I saw you in that same shirt, vest, and hose two days ago. Either you fired your wardrobe master, or you have been cavorting at the Tower for two straight days."

Cromwell took a step forward. "Was there a banquet here, Edward? Because it looks as though you've gone and spilled wine all over your fine shirt. Not wine, then? Must be some other red liquid…What do you think Mister Sadler?"

Ralph stared straight ahead.

"What do you want, Cromwell," Edward muttered. "Jane has already promoted you to Knight of the Garter ahead of me. No doubt she will nominate you as Lord Protector over Prince Edward."

"Here is what I want: Show me your hands, stretch them out before me."

Edward sighed and shoved his hands under Cromwell's gaze. A girlish yelp escaped him when Cromwell's own strong hand whipped out and twisted Edward's palm backward. He panted as Cromwell held him in a vice; Edward feared even the smallest movement would snap his hand off his arm. Apparently, Cromwell's days as a mercenary were not so long behind him that he'd completely forsaken the efficiency of brute force to make a point.

"Is that blood under your nails?" Cromwell demanded.

Edward narrowed his eyes. "You tell me, you would know better than anyone," he spat. Somewhere, a twig snapped, and a flare of pain made Edward retch. He realized only too late that Cromwell had just broken one of his fingers.

"If blood flows under my watch, it is to safeguard the state. Not so that I can stiffen my prick," Cromwell hissed. "Listen: I hear even a whisper that you have been roaming the Tower, torturing and sodomizing, Mister Sadler and I are going to come back with a pair of scissors. I leave it to your imagination as to which appendage we will decide to cut off." Cromwell smoothed the fine silk of his summer robes. "You are brother to the queen. Act like it." He cocked his head at the sight of Edward bent over his hand, groaning like a toad. "Mister Sadler, see if you can fetch some water for the Viscount. He can barely hold himself up."

Cromwell waited until Ralph was out of earshot. "I need your help, Edward."

"Funny way to ask for it," Edward managed in short gasps.

"I want your public support behind the Poor Laws. Help me get the votes in Parliament, and I will help you."

"You can help me by calling a doctor!" Edward cried out.

Cromwell swatted at the air. "Oh your hand is nothing. If I came out of a scrape with my father with only a broken pinky finger, then I counted myself lucky. Bind it, and you will be good as before within the month. You help me, and I will help you get rid of Francis Bryan."

The pain drained out of Edward's face and was replaced by something else. "How?"

"I can send him away on a mission for the crown. Send him to France. Maybe our Black Pope will return, maybe he will meet his end on some Parisian back alley."

"You want him out of the way so he cannot vote against the Poor Laws."

"And you want him to stop fucking your wife," Cromwell observed mildly. "Edward, does it really matter why we want the things we want?"

III.

Elizabeth closed the shutters of Jane's bedchamber. If the queen was not in prayer, or with the king, she was resting on her bed. Jane beamed for Henry when they dined together and heard Mass. She glowed for the court when she sat on her throne. But when Elizabeth shut the door behind them, Jane would stretch across her bed. She blinked slowly in concentration, willing herself to be stout with a boy.

Elizabeth pushed a pillow under Jane's ankles before easing herself on to the bed next to her sister. She rested her head on Jane's shoulder and breathed in the scent of her hair: honey and chamomile. For a moment, Elizabeth pretended they were back in their old room at Wolf Hall.

"See, I told you that we would both be fat as Welsh ponies," Elizabeth smiled.

"Oh, Lissie," Jane sighed. "Sometimes I wish I could be pregnant for forever, that the day of reckoning will never come and I will not be put to the same test that Katherine of Aragon and Anne Boleyn failed."

Elizabeth threw an arm across Jane's budding belly. "Tonight, I'm taking you out of your bodice. I don't care if we have to pad your stomach, but we are going parade you around at dinner tonight, so fertile, so glorious, that there can be no doubt you carry the next Prince of Wales."

"They're making wagers about the two of us," Jane said ruefully. "Tom told me that they are betting two pounds to one that I will have a son and you a daughter."

"Two to one. There are worse odds. We can either lay here, fretting over our own shadows, or we can march into dinner, the fertile Seymour sisters."

Jane gave her sister's hand a squeeze before rolling off the bed. She pulled a stool next to her vanity for Elizabeth to sit on, while she brushed Jane's hair.

"Lissie, you do not have to do this. You should have taken to your confinement bed weeks ago."

Elizabeth rolled Jane's wheaten hair into curls. "And if I did, who could you take into your confidence?" Jane's silence answered the question. Elizabeth pulled out a pleated, loose gown, spun out of pure gold thread.

"That is supposed to be for my coronation-"

"So? Wear it twice. Who will know except us? We will put your brocade dressing gown over it. That gold cloth costs a queen's ransom. May as well wear it more than once."

"Ironic, coming from you."

Elizabeth unlocked the chest in which Jane kept her jewelry. She pulled out the best diadem, weighted with giant yellow diamonds.

"I had that commissioned for All Saint's Day. I was saving it," Jane protested as Elizabeth nestled the crown into her hair.

"You look like Hera herself, presiding over Olympus." She gently turned her sister so she could see herself in the mirror. Elizabeth rested her chin on her sister's shoulder. "Blessed Mary herself would surrender her place in Heaven to look as beautiful as you right now."

Jane smiled shyly at the tall, pretty woman reflected in front of her. "All right. Call the rest of my ladies. To dinner we go."

Elizabeth threw open the doors of the queen's bedchamber. "Her Majesty will lead us to dinner. Lady Rochford, stop gawking at the queen's belly and fall in place behind her! Lady Misseldon, stop looking so beside yourself and hold queen's train as she walks dinner!" Elizabeth was about to scold another gaping maid when a strong cramp pulled across her stomach. She steadied herself against the doorway. Jane glanced over her shoulder.

"Lissie, will you not walk beside me?" Jane called.

"I will be along, just some things I need to tidy up." Elizabeth waited until the last skirt swished out the door before she let out the breath she was holding. Could it be her time? She waited for another pang. Elizabeth told herself it was nothing.

She fell in step behind the rest of the ladies in waiting. Jane marched her battalion of ivory dresses into the great hall, their golden curls bobbing with each step. Someone announced, "Her Majesty the queen!" The court sank down in astonished silence, then erupted into applause as they took in the sight of Jane's pregnancy laid bare for the world to see.

Elizabeth hung back, anticipating another pain. A cool hand grazed the back of her palm. She turned to find Cromwell hovering next to her.

"Dove, what's wrong? Your face is grey as death." His fingertips brushed the vertebrae of her neck.

"I thought I felt something…but it went away. I think it was just a false pain. It's too early."

"I'm sending for that Turkish doctor and a midwife," Cromwell insisted.

"Really, Thomas. I don't think that's necessary-"

"I'm sending for that Turkish doctor and a midwife," Cromwell repeated. "If we need them, we need them. If we don't, we don't." He bent and kissed her hands. "I have business to conduct tonight; I can do it in the hall. It is no matter. I will be standing close by, should you need me." He kissed her hand again when Francis Bryan wandered up.

He swept off his hat and bowed deeply, more for Elizabeth's sake than Cromwell.

"You wanted to see me, Master Cromwell? If this is about that outbreak of the French pox in Cheapside, I had nothing to do with it!"

Cromwell shook his head. "Sir Francis, do not defend yourself until you are actually accused. Please see Lissie to her seat, and when you are finished, his Majesty and I have a proposal to put to you.

"Lissie, you are so perfectly spherical that we may as well just roll you on over to your chair," Francis cracked. Anne Stanhope stood and excused herself just as Francis finished scooting Elizabeth up to the table.

Elizabeth had a cheeky comment at the ready for Edward, but she stopped short. "Jesus, Mary, and Joseph! What happened to your hand, Edward?"

"I, I fell off my horse," he mumbled.

"But you have not ridden out in two days," Elizabeth said. Edward completely ignored her. He huddled closer to Jane. They both stared at Cromwell intently, but the cheerful music snatched away most of their conversation. Elizabeth only caught bits.

"What is the Lord Privy Seal doing?" Jane asked. Elizabeth wanted to say: making money. Men clustered around her husband while purses of money changed hands. For each exchange, Cromwell's dutiful clerk, Ralph Sadler, noted the transaction in a leather book.

"I imagine those nobles want to buy the leases of some of the suppressed abbeys," Edward said without sentiment. They watched as Ralph discreetly folded a purse of money into a leather satchel.

"What are they giving Lord Cromwell?" Jane dared Elizabeth and Edward to name it. Elizabeth gnawed on a chicken leg. Please Jane, she prayed, please don't antagonize Cromwell any more than you have done.

"Bribes," Edward answered easily. "He's a very rich man already. Some say, the richest in the kingdom."

Elizabeth became very interested in the wine poached lark on her plate. She felt the weight of her siblings' eyes on her, but what could she say? Elizabeth decided if she was going to open her mouth at the table, it was only for the purpose of shoveling in food. She waved over a platter of asparagus.

"Does the king know of these practices?" Jane demanded.

"He asks no questions. As long as the Crown receives its 10% share." Edward shrugged.

"Is it not terrible that our sacred building be used like this as profit?" she burst out.

About to ask Jane where she thought the Crown received the revenue for banquets such as this, Elizabeth decided to pile her plate full of berries and clotted cream.

"If you say so," Edward smiled affably. He knew Cromwell was watching them watching him. "You have to understand how clever it is," Edward admitted. His grudging admiration made Elizabeth look up from her plate. "By allowing these new men to buy a stake in the kingdom, Mister Cromwell makes sure of their loyalty to the king…and himself."

Jane hardened her glare at Cromwell. Elizabeth was about to tell Jane to fix her face when a pain ripped through her abdomen. The cramp was so sharp, so pure, Elizabeth could not even cry out. Her scalp broke out into a sweat, then another pain. She widened her eyes, desperately trying to catch Cromwell's attention.

Elizabeth wrenched around. Ursula stood behind them, looking on as Francis led Anne Stanhope off for an ill-disguised romp.

"Ursula," Elizabeth whispered. "Please get my husband for me. Tell him it's time. But please keep this quiet." Ursula nodded and gave Elizabeth's shoulder a quick squeeze. She inhaled deeply, gripping the underside of the table. A gush of warm liquid poured out of her. Elizabeth wondered if she was doomed to have all of her birthing moments play out in public.

IV.

It unfolded like a crude parody of their wedding night. He helped her out of her gown and knelt to take off her stockings and shoes.

"My water broke at dinner." Elizabeth's voice quivered with pain. Before the crackling fire in the nursery, Elizabeth stood as naked as her own birth.

"Well, better at dinner than in church," he remarked. He pulled a clean shift over her head. She steadied herself against him as he helped her to the bed set up in the finished nursery. Cromwell eased her onto her side. He worked his fingers into her lower back. "Better?" he asked.

"A little." Another pain ripped through her like a sword, cutting her world cleanly half. On the one side were women who had given birth, felt a labor pain. On the other side was everyone else. Her teeth chattered with the effort of not calling out for her own mother.

"Be easy my dove, be easy." Cromwell rubbed her shoulders. "The doctor and midwife will be here soon."

"How was it for your first wife?" Elizabeth turned to face him. "How long were the labors?"

"All through the night."

"Were you there?"

"Yes."

"Did she scream?"

"No." At Cromwell's answer. Elizabeth gripped the pillow. She resolved not to be one of the women that screamed.

The doctor arrived within the hour. He came in through the secret entrance of the apartments. A young woman bustled in behind him, carrying books and a sack. She was a world away from the crones that Bishop Gardiner had once set upon Elizabeth. The girl was short, thin and scrupulously clean. She curtsied deeply to Cromwell.

"My lord, I owe you my life," she said. Her voice carried the Calais lilt.

"So many of us have our lives thanks to you," said the doctor in French. Elizabeth sat up a bit. What were they talking about? But another labor pain cut the conversation short. Cromwell had a terse exchange with the doctor in Italian.

The midwife turned to Elizabeth and smiled. "They are arguing over whether your husband can remain with you. Ismael does not want him here. He wants as few people in the birthing chamber as possible. Less people means less filth."

So her mysterious doctor finally had a name: Ismael.

"I think my husband wishes to stay."

"The better question is, do _you_ want him to stay? Because before the sun rises, you will have vomited, pissed, and soiled yourself. But you decide."

"Right. Less people here to see this, the better," Elizabeth agreed. The young woman warmed her hands on the fire before moving to touch Elizabeth. She felt along the heaving belly. Then she eased a hand up inside. Elizabeth whimpered, but the woman just nodded along, speaking to herself.

"Your baby is positioned correctly. Your body is doing what it is supposed to when it is supposed to. God willing, your first birth will be an easy birth." She looked around the nursery. "I assume that you have your own maids in waiting?"

"Yes. Do you need them? Because someone can fetch—"

"No. Their only job is to keep clean linens and boiled water on hand. Less bodies in here, the better."

After Ismael swatted Cromwell out of the room, he turned to Elizabeth panting on the bed. "My lady, finally we meet happily," he smiled. "You are sister to the queen, and wife to a great man, but tonight in this room, you are no better or worse than the countless women who have gone before you. Forget all the foolishness whispered among city wives; you do as we tell you tonight. You breathe when we tell you to breathe, and you only push when we tell you to push." His French came out smooth and fast as a spool of thread. He nodded to the midwife with him. "This is Isabella, she is my apprentice. I am passing my knowledge onto her, so I hope you do not mind that I supervise her tonight."

Elizabeth nodded. She struggled to keep up with the rapid French, but she grasped the meaning of it. Another pain ripped through her, causing her whole body to seize up. Isabella let Elizabeth cling to one arm, while she raised a cup of water to Elizabeth's lips with her free hand.

"Mary, mother of God!" Elizabeth wailed. "It gets worse than this?"

"Much worse, my lady," Isabella said flatly. "Listen, call upon whatever saints, goddesses, or devils you know. Ismael and I have heard it all, and the blaspheme stays in the birthing chamber.

Time hovered and flew by. Hours passed, but the world seemed static to Elizabeth: she felt as though she had no history prior to this night, no history that really mattered. By the fourth hour, drenched in sweat, Elizabeth ripped off her shift. She lay back and could have laughed at the sight of her two thin legs dwarfed by the size of swollen belly and breasts. She tossed her life and her dignity into the hands of Mohammedan doctor and his Calais midwife. They spoke hushed, rapid French, every so often feeling her belly, looking between her splayed legs. In between the worst of the contractions, Isabella dabbed Elizabeth with linen soaked in the hot water, and rolled her over to place clean sheets beneath her thighs.

"What did you mean when you told my husband that you owe him your life?" Elizabeth asked during a lull.

Isabella looked up from the book she and Ismael were consulting. "I meant exactly that: I owe him my life. So does Ismael." She took out a scale and measured herbs. "You see this?" she indicated her sack of herbs and the book. "This is more than enough to get you burned at the stake twice over in Paris. The Church sees a woman studying how women actually give birth, and do you know what they call it? They call it witchcraft. Men of the Church see a foreigner like Ismael remove a cataract, and they call it sorcery. Practicing medicine, real medicine, is like a capital offense on the Continent." Isabella shook her head. "Your husband has been bringing to England people like Ismael and me, granting us passports. He does his best to save as many as he can."

"Are you a Lutheran?" Elizabeth asked.

"No, I'm just different."

By the time the sun came up, the pains intensified. Elizabeth shoved a pillow inside her mouth so she could hold fast to her promise not to scream. Isabella pulled Elizabeth forward.

"I need you to come forward, crouch on your knees. It helps the baby out. You are close. It's time to stop pushing."

"I don't think I can do this anymore," Elizabeth cried. Isabella grabbed Elizabeth's face.

"You must never say that, must never even think to give up during a birth. If you surrender the fight for even a moment, Death will sniff out your hesitation. You never let a woman give up during a birth." Isabella climbed on the bed to support Elizabeth shoulders as she crouched on her knees. "You are doing wonderfully. I see the head. We are almost there."

Elizabeth gasped at the final sensation of being ripped in two. She collapsed backwards and lay there dazed for a second before she heard the cry. It started as a meow, then crescendoed into a full wail. She tried to sit up on her elbows, only to falter. On instinct, she reached out her arms into the air.

"Please let me hold my baby," she mumbled through parched lips. "Please"

"Congratulations. You have a strong, healthy son," announced Ismael.

"A son," Elizabeth whispered. Then she came back to her senses. "No, no you do not understand. I am not supposed to have a son. I was not supposed to have a son—" Isabella pressed a cup of water to her lips. She eased Elizabeth up against the pillows. The baby's cry hit a new octave as Ismael tied off the cord and wiped the boy clean.

"Oh God, Oh God. I was not supposed to have a boy, not—" The words stopped in Elizabeth's throat. Ismael pressed her fleece wrapped son into her arms. Elizabeth stared in dumb amazement at the red mottled face, and sticky black curls.

"My love," she whispered. "My little love. My little black lamb." His trembling lips opened for another scream. Elizabeth pushed her bare nipple against the open little mouth. He latched on immediately and suckled himself into silence. She traced the curve of his long eye-lashes with her thumb nail. When his tiny palm rested against her breast, Elizabeth thought: this is prayer.

Somewhere in the background, on another island, Isabella was telling her to nurse the baby as often as they would let her, that she should keep her milk flowing so as not to conceive another child too quickly.

"Give them half a chance, they will try to breed you to death," Isabella grumbled. Elizabeth did not ask who "they" were. She was too busy discovering each and every fold of her son's skin.

V.

When Henry Tudor left Whitehall for a Cheapside brothel with Charles Brandon and Francis Bryan, it was more for the pleasure of dressing as a common man with common needs. He liked when his subjects mistook him for one of the commons.

Tonight, the late summer streets were eerily deserted. Worse, two-thirds of the whores were missing from the brothels. Finally, the trio found a tavern that actually had the door open and candles burning. Henry threw himself onto a stool and flicked a gold crown at the barmaid.

"Ale," he said. "For the whole tavern." Oblivious, the wench just gave the king a gap toothed smile.

"Might have saved yourself your purse," she cooed. "You gentlemen must be from up in the country. Otherwise you would know." She shoved the gold crown into her cleavage, never to be seen again.

"Know…what?" Brandon asked cautiously.

"Know that all of London is drinking for free tonight!" she put her hands on her hips. "Lord Cromwell is throwing open the doors of all his London houses, plying the whole city with free food and wine. All to celebrate the birth of his son!"

"His son." Henry repeated flatly.

"Oh yes. his wife is a famous beauty, and he was so overjoyed about the birth of their child that he ordered that son or daughter, the city would celebrate and set off fireworks." She shrugged. "Me and my girls have been planning for this night for the past month. We drew lots to see who had to stay here at the tavern, and who got to roister with the rest of London."

"Lord Cromwell shuts down half of London for the birth of his son?" Brandon clarified

The barmaid nodded. "I'm mostly eager for the fireworks, myself."

Henry slammed down his fist on the rickety table. "WHO DOES HE THINK HE IS? THE KING OF ENGLAND!"

Standing under the fire lit sky of London, watching the bursts of color, Henry could not help but wonder whether in one of the stacks of paper that Cromwell constantly shoved under his nose, Henry had inadvertently signed off on Cromwell's glorification of his brat and his harlot.


	18. Chapter 18

Edward Seymour tried not to yawn as his barber shaved him that morning. The steady crackle of fireworks the night before had kept him awake. Edward would have slept like an infant, secure in the knowledge that Cromwell's own arrogance had just destroyed him, were it not for the _booms _and _pops_, followed by flashes of color illuminating the night.

Freshly shaved, but still not quite awake, Edward ambled to the king's presence chamber. He noted, with particular ire, that most of the men wearing his livery were passed out among the rushes. Their heads lolled together, as they hiccupped and recounted their grand night. "Oh, what a generous man, that Lord Cromwell is," they slurred. "Greedy. But he does not shy away from spending his money." They raised their arms, toasting with imaginary goblets. "To the blacksmith's son, who threw the best damn party all year!"

Francis Bryan squeezed himself out from behind the door to the king's rooms. Edward took in his tattered jerkin, bloodshot eyes, and stale, sour breath. Apparently the commons were not the only Londoners helping themselves to Cromwell's hospitality.

"Oh, it's you," Edward sniffed. "Thought you'd been dispatched to France already."

"I catch the tide late this afternoon." Francis glanced down at his disheveled appearance. "That's what we were doing on the streets last night, one last hurrah before I go hunting for Cardinal Pole. "

"I see." Edward moved past Francis, but the Black Pope stopped him with a palm against his doublet.

"Before you go in there, my lord, you need to prepare yourself. There is no better way to explain this, so I may as well just speak plainly." Francis paused for effect, then continued. "Thomas Cromwell made the king of England cry."

Edward grinned, but set his face to rights when he was confronted with the sight of Henry Tudor: tear streaked, pacing, and ranting.

"What am I to do? What am I to do in the face of such impertinence, presumptuousness, insolence?" Henry paused for a breath and another gulp of wine. "And how dare he ply the commons with such good wine? Now they will expect me to serve them from my own cellar when my Prince Edward is born!" Henry threw himself into his chair at the head of the long table.

Edward had seen a great many things. But he had never before had the pleasure of a full-blown Tudor tantrum. Even when the king boxed Cromwell's ears over the Northern rebellion, even when the king banished Edward from court after Elizabeth miscarried her first child in the chapel, the king had not been reduced to tears.

"Your Majesty, the fireworks display was overreaching, uncalled for," Edward agreed. "Your Majesty should not let such insolence go unpunished."

"I will box that son-of-a-Putney-slut's ears!" Henry roared. Actually, Edward had been hoping for decapitation, but a beating was a start.

"More wine?" Charles Brandon offered. He shook the jug in his hands.

"Why?" Henry sniffled. "So I can be reminded that Cromwell drinks better than I do? That he eats better than I do?" He wiped his bleary eyes with a knuckle, but offered his cup.

"Majesty, there is no one in this realm, no prince in Christendom, who could be better kept than you. Cromwell has made a fool of himself to pretend otherwise," Edward went on. Brandon poured a measure of wine into a cup and passed it to Edward.

"Try this," he said. Then Brandon shrugged. "We figured since we were in the City, we may as well help ourselves to Cromwell's extravagance. Sir Francis took an entire jug."

"A tithe, a tax, for our king's displeasure," Francis explained.

Edward took a sip. He had to contain the look of utter contentment as the wine hit his tongue. Smooth. Bold. A note of cherry. Strong, yet a man could drink it without having to cut the wine with water.

"Majesty, this is vinegar compared to what your court enjoys nightly," Edward lied. Henry snorted, and snatched the jug out of Brandon's hands. The king drank deeply from it.

"Fucking Italian," Henry muttered. Edward could not be sure if the king was referring to the wine or Cromwell. A page scuttled into the chamber and bowed.

"Majesty, the Lord Privy Seal," the boy announced. Then he turned on his heel and dashed out of the room just as an immaculately groomed Cromwell strode in. He had his enigmatic face on; if Edward did not know better, he would never have guessed that Lissie had given Cromwell a strong, healthy son the day before. Edward backed into a corner and took a seat, ready to enjoy to whole new string of fireworks about to be unleashed.

"Your Majesty, my lords," Cromwell extended each of them a bow calculated to their precise rank. The men just stared blankly at him. Henry's mouth trembled, and his grip tightened on the jug. Edward prayed that Henry would smash Cromwell's skull in with his own wine. Unfortunately, Henry put the wine down.

Henry walked over to Cromwell and blinked. Then, he clenched his fist and landed a punch across Cromwell's nose.

"You think too high of yourself!" Henry shouted. "Where does a man of such base and low degree get such presumptions?" Henry put his mouth to Cromwell's ear, yet Cromwell stared ahead, unmoving, letting the blood flow freely from his nose. "I've had enough of your high-handedness," Henry whispered. "Enough."

Cromwell responded by holding forth a sheet of paper. "The latest figures from your Majesty's treasury, including the revenue generated by the dissolution of the religious houses," Cromwell said in a nasally voice. He pinched his bleeding nose with an embroidered kerchief.

Henry looked at the figures, up at Cromwell, then back at the figures. Edward craned his neck, itching to know what sort of numbers stopped Henry's tirade cold in its tracks. Henry's eyes narrowed to dagger points, then he forced his full lips into a tight smile.

"Master Cromwell, your wife blessed you with a son yesterday. No doubt my own son Edward is soon to follow. As a cousin to the next Prince of Wales, I bless your boy with my own namesake. You will name your son Henry. Because your wife is sister to the queen, I will stand as godfather at his Christening," Henry purred. Edward bit his cheek until he tasted blood. Wake up, wake up, Edward, he told himself. This has to be a dream. This is just a terrible dream, now wake up.

"And I put you in charge of organizing the festivities for my son's birth," Henry continued. He put his arms around Cromwell's shoulders, and walked him out. "I put my trust in you, my most faithful servant, to see to it that the celebrations are the greatest ever seen in London. I repeat: those celebrations must be the greatest _ever seen_."

Cromwell left with a deep bow and a mumbled "thank you Majesty." Edward exhaled the breath he'd been holding. Brandon opened his mouth to protest, but wisely shut it. Francis's one eye widened in dumbfoundedness. Henry walked briskly back into his bedchamber and closed the curtains behind him.

Once back in the throne room, Brandon finally said what they had all been thinking: "Why?"

Suddenly, everything snapped into focus for Edward. Cromwell's mad-cap coup and the king's mad-cap response no longer seemed quite so mad.

"Why?" Edward replied. "Do you not see? Think about it: is there a merchant, a banker, a lord in the City who does not now know that Thomas Cromwell is the richest, most powerful man in the kingdom? If a merchant, a banker, a lord needs a loan or a favor, who will they go to first? And the commons? They are still drunk on Cromwell's wine; the mischief in the North is a distant memory when they are stuffing themselves with meat pies and guzzling wine."

"But-but, why would the king heap more rewards on a man who has already taken so much power into his hands?" Brandon asked. Edward gave a little tut in irritation. He turned to face the duke.

"Must I spell it out for you? By his Majesty branding Cromwell's pup with his own name, standing as godfather, the king ensures that another Tudor cousin will be bound to Henry, instead of against him. The king intends to keep Cromwell's brat as close as possible to him, so that his Majesty's boot can come down on that boy's throat at a moment's notice."

"Keep your friends close and your enemies closer," Brandon nodded slowly, thinking slowly. Edward wondered when the duke would grow out of his habit of saying the obvious.

"Still, so imprudent for a wily fox like Cromwell," Francis said.

"Reckless, but not stupid," Edward said tiredly. "He knew he could get away with it. He knew if he could bring in a staggering profit, it would distract the king." Edward walked off, weary of having to explain that which seemed so obvious to him. He began to foment a new plan. One that did not depend on binding Cromwell to the Seymours through marriage, or a gamble on Jane bearing a son. All Edward need do was stop Cromwell from making Henry richer. Edward checked his step. There was still something that made him hesitate. When the king landed a punch squarely across Cromwell's face, the man took the blow, moved with the force of it, and then promptly squared his shoulders and got right back up again. Almost as if Cromwell was saying: go ahead and strike at me, I can take it.

II.

Cromwell choked on the metallic taste of blood draining down his throat. He kept the kerchief pressed against his nose. The ruffles peeking from the collar of his robes had been stained as red as the ruby which sat nestled against his throat. At least black did not show blood or ink. What, did people think he had been trying to make a fashion statement all these years? He dunked a clean handkerchief in cold water and pressed it to his nose.

Wonderfully done, Thomas, he told himself. Wonderfully done. He had meant to send a clear signal to the most powerful people in London that there was a new master in town. And, if he were to be honest with himself, perhaps vain glory had something to do with it as well. Unfortunately, the spoiled man-child who sat on the throne also received the message, and now the king's wounded pride demanded its own grand party to welcome the new Prince(ss) of Wales. Cromwell's nose throbbed even more of the thought of how much bullion that would gobble up. He took small comfort that the Poor Laws would never have passed, never have been funded anyway.

His long, white fingers deftly worked a clean linen shirt over his head. He made a quick audit in the mirror before going to see Elizabeth in the nursery. Cromwell pushed against the side of his nose and winced. Bleeding, painful, but fortunately not broken. He could face his wife and new son with a bloody nose, but not a crooked one.

He opened the door of the nursery quietly as he could—years of experience had taught him that fastest way to earn a woman's ire was to wake a sleeping baby. Elizabeth slept in the early morning light, snoring softly. She'd moved the crib so that it nestled parallel to the bed. Her small ivory hand flopped to the side so that the back of her finger tips rested against the infant's flushed cheeks.

When Cromwell looked over the crib, he saw his son's eyes were open. They made long slow blinks as he tried to make sense of the figures around him. His eyes had no trace of baby blue: raven black. They widened a little as they took in Cromwell's face, and his mouth rounded into an "O". Cromwell told himself it was because his son recognized him from the day before, from when the physician finally let him hold his son. Yesterday, he had whispered "William" into his son's ear. But now, he was to be "Henry."

Little Henry squirmed, gurgled, and opened his mouth to make a fuss. Carefully, Cromwell slid a hand under the fragile skull and scooped the furry bundle into his arms.

"Shhh, shhh, my little black lamb. Let your mother rest," Cromwell murmured. He took a seat by the fire, so he could explore his son's features all over again. He traced one ear, which folded over slightly. When his first children were born, Bess used to scold him for removing their booties and caps when he wanted to inspect the lines on the pads of their feet, or the folds of their ears.

An unexpected pain knotted itself in Cromwell's chest, and he held Henry closer. He had a new wife, a new child, new memories. But the past was the past, which was to say that it was entirely lost. Bess and the girls were dead and buried in an unmarked grave, hastily dug as the Sweat surged. You cannot replace a lost family, Cromwell thought. You can make a new family, but what is lost is lost.

Henry squirmed and fussed. Cromwell offered him the knuckle of his forefinger to pacify him. Henry raised a hand, and it came to rest against Cromwell's chain of office. Cromwell wondered if his own father had ever held him or his sisters, or did Walter just take a look and go have another drink? One Christmas, when Anne and Grace were using Gregory as their camel to follow the Star of Bethlehem (it hardly matter to his girls that there were supposed to be _three _wisemen), Cromwell watched them play before the fire. He'd thought, what kind of man would harm his child, what kind of man could beat his own child, bear to listen to the screams of pain? Then he remembered: Oh, right, Walter had been that sort of man.

Cromwell put his lips to Henry's folded over ear. "I love you. Your mother loves you. I will never let you come to harm. I swear I will protect you and your mother with my life."

Henry sneezed, and then launched into a genuine cry. Elizabeth stirred at the sound of Henry crying. She rubbed her eyes and tried to sit up.

"How long have you been here?" she asked. "How long have I been asleep?"

"Not long. You were asleep when I came in." He passed Henry to her. "I think it's you he wants," Cromwell smiled apologetically. She shrugged one shoulder out of her nightgown and pressed her nipple against Henry's trembling mouth. Like a musician on cue, he quieted immediately. Cromwell kissed her forehead before seating himself at her feet.

"How are you feeling?"

"Exhausted. Sore. Deliriously happy." Elizabeth smiled through closed eyes. "I cannot imagine not nursing my own child."

"Nor can I." He watched contentedly for a moment.

"Let me guess what happened to your nose," Elizabeth said ruefully.

"The king was not best pleased about the celebrations to welcome our little black lamb."

"Are you surprised? But I take it he was pleased about your revenue reports," Elizabeth arched an eyebrow at him. She could admit that he was ingenious about squeezing money out of the church, but that did not mean she approved.

"Pleased enough to bestow his namesake on our son and stand as his godfather," Cromwell sighed. He knew the king was aiming at something, but he could not figure the angle.

"What?" Elizabeth's hand instinctively cupped the infant's black furry scalp. "His majesty never does anything without a reason. What could he have in mind?"

For once, the king's mind was opaque to Cromwell. Usually, Cromwell knew what the king wanted before Henry knew himself.

"Perhaps to keep our boy directly loyal to the king?" Cromwell offered.

"Perhaps." Elizabeth sounded just as unsure as Cromwell. She put on a brave smile. "So, Henry William Cromwell. That is a good, strong English name. I am sure he will do it proud." Cromwell squeezed her foot, whether to reassure her or him, he could not be sure.

"I've asked Isabella to stay on for a while longer, until I am out of confinement. I hope you do not mind adding another mouth to your household," Elizabeth said.

"I have four hundred people under my employment; I do not think one more will mar the accounting books."

"You don't suppose it would possible for Isabella or Ismael to be nearby when it is time for Jane-"

"Lissie, you know just as well as I that it simply is not possible," Cromwell sighed. "Gardiner would have them tied to the stake on sight. Take heart: your sister will have the best midwives in the country to attend her."

"They were little enough help to the past two queens," she snorted.

III.

Elizabeth was in love. She could not bear to be away from him for a single moment. She awoke at night, wondering what he was dreaming. If she could fall asleep to the sound of his breathing for the rest of her days, she would die a happy woman. She babbled nonsense to him, professing her love in every sentence.

She cradled Henry against her bare skin while she soaked in a lukewarm bath. She plucked a strand of lavender floating in the clean, mild water. She tickled it against Henry's round belly. Isabella smiled as she watched on. She sat at a bench, grinding herbs and bees wax into linseed oil.

"What's that?" Elizabeth craned her neck around.

"It's a healing ointment. You need to spread this over your female parts every day after your bath, so that you heal properly. It will help your breasts, if they become sore from nursing."

"I wish my sister could have someone with your skill and knowledge. I worry for her when she's brought to her child bed," Elizabeth admitted.

"But you will be with her, yes? I can write down some advice, common remedies."

Elizabeth was about to say that was no substitute for a proper midwife and doctor when her maid, Alice, burst in.

"I am so sorry to disturb you my lady, but Master Gregory is here to see little Henry," Alice said breathlessly. Then she looked sideways. "But he is not alone. Anne Stanhope was quick on his heels. I am so sorry my lady! I had already admitted Master Gregory when I see your brother's wife coming down the hall. It was too late! I could not very tell her that you could receive no visitors when I just finished telling Master Gregory that you would see him." Alice shrugged and disappeared behind the door just in time to miss a scolding.

Elizabeth groaned. No doubt Edward sent Anne to spy on his behalf, to recount every detail of the little scamp who had caused so much uproar around court. She handed Henry off to Isabella. She pulled a satin nightgown over her wet head and knotted a silk dressing gown around her. She piled her hair on top of her head in a messy bun.

Inside Cromwell's presence chamber, Elizabeth walked into one of the most awkward silences imaginable. Gregory squeezed his wine cup so hard his hands blanched. Anne walked around the room, opening and closing drawers. She turned around to see Elizabeth with Henry bundled against her.

"Oh, Lissie, what a dear little thing, you have there!" Anne crowed. Elizabeth grit her teeth on the word "thing."

"Good of you to come by Anne," she said levelly. "His name is Henry, but we call him Harry. Actually, I have taken to calling him 'Little Harr.'" She kissed his soft curls. "Let us meet your big brother, Gregory. Harr, say hello to your big brother."

Gregory gathered the warm, fragile flesh into his arms. Harr cooed and gurgled.

"He likes you!" Elizabeth said excitedly. "He does not do that for just anyone you know." Gregory beamed back at Elizabeth. He made faces at Harr and whispered nonsensical words.

"Well, I reckon he just has not met many people yet," Anne remarked drily. She took the liberty of a chair and another cup of wine. "Master Gregory, you look so bright and proud, one might wonder who did the honors of fatherhood."

Elizabeth's eyes shot up. "Peace, Anne." She offered an unsubtle eye-roll to Gregory and steered the conversation to safety. "How goes your schooling in Cambridge? I know your studies keep you busy, but I know your father would like to see more of you."

"I suppose I would be more dedicated if I knew what I was being educated for." Gregory shrugged off the admission of disappointment. He tickled Harr under his arms to watch him squirm.

"Your father probably wants you to take a seat in Parliament," Elizabeth smiled. "I think you would make a very fine burgess in your own right." Gregory blushed at the simple compliment.

"Your father probably wants to _buy_ you a seat in Parliament," Anne said sweetly. Gregory gave Harr one last tickle before handing him back to Elizabeth.

"Well, I best be leaving. My father will be upset if he knows that I spent all day playing with the baby instead of furthering the Cromwell family's interests." He bowed to the ladies and tipped his hat to Harr. "And a very good day to you, Little Man."

"Gregory, why don't you come back later this afternoon?" Elizabeth wanted to speak with him sans Anne Stanhope. "I eat an early dinner in my rooms. It will be just Harr, his nurse, and myself. We would be pleased to have you."

"I should like that very much." Gregory held Elizabeth's eyes for a moment, then blushed. After the door shut behind him, Anne bubbled with uncharitable laughter.

"That poor, poor boy!" Anne snickered.

"Anne, he is a sweet boy. He means well."

"You do not see it, do you?" Anne leaned forward. "That poor boy is in love with you! The expression on his face when you sailed into the room—"

"You are mistaken. He's just shy."

"You little minx! You walk in here, looking like some Oriental Empress—I mean look at you for God's sake!" Anne gestured to the richly embroidered silk of Elizabeth's dressing gown. Patterns of peonies, phoenixes, and dragons snaked their way around the pink silk. Elizabeth self-consciously patted her damp bun atop her head.

"Had you both given me some notice that you were calling this morning, of course I would have properly dressed-"

"Oh, I think the way you dressed suited Master Gregory just fine!" Anne's round cheeks strained with laughter. "He probably sits up Cambridge waiting for Cromwell to shove off, so that he can swoop in and offer you his warmest condolences."

Elizabeth's hand shot out, gripping Anne's wrist. Without meaning to, her nails dug into the tender underside of Anne's arm. Elizabeth held her sister-in-law's gaze steady.

"Anne, that is a vile thing to say. Don't ever let me catch you repeating something like that again."

Elizabeth never did mention to Cromwell that Gregory ate dinner with her in the nursery that afternoon. Gregory must have forgotten to tell his father as well, because Cromwell never brought it up. She knew she had nothing to hide, so why did Anne Stanhope leave her with the lingering feeling that there were some things Cromwell did not need to know?

The morning that Elizabeth came out of her confinement to return to Jane's service, Elizabeth was leaking milk and tears. She'd spent most of the previous day bawling. She burst into tears when Harr cried out for her, because she knew today was the last day that she could nurse him whenever either of them felt like it. She cried through the entire churching ceremony and sniffled through dinner.

In order to lace her into her stays, her maids had to brace one foot against her back while pulling the laces with all their might. She winced with each breath as her full, tender breasts smashed against her stays. Her hands felt around her waist, wondering where exactly her waist went.

"Get used to it!" Isabella laughed. "You will never have the body you did a year ago, so make peace with your new self." She threw her travelling cloak around her. "I found the sweetest, gentlest wet nurse I could for your little Harr—oh please do not cry, my lady! You will have your son to yourself at night, but since you cannot be two places at once, and Harr needs to be fed during the day, resign yourself to a wet nurse."

Elizabeth managed to blend into the sea of milling courtiers. On purpose, she'd chosen a dark brown taffeta gown with no embroidery, just some pearls sewn along the neckline of her dress. She pushed her distinct red-blonde hair up into an unremarkable gold net. On her way to Jane's rooms, a man bumped her elbow. He scarcely noticed her.

"It's happening! It's happening!" he shouted over ringing bells. "I pray the queen will soon send us a prince!"

Elizabeth set off at a dead run for Cromwell's offices. She told herself that Jane was only in the early stages of a long labor, so her sister would not mind the detour. Cromwell must have had the same idea because she found him speeding in her direction. He caught her long sleeve and spun her into a corner with him.

"Whole worlds hang in the balance," he whispered. "I need you to use those beautiful blue eyes today."

"I'll let you know if anything changes."

"Good," he nodded. "If anything happens, good, bad, indifferent, come find me in my private closet. I've made a pretense that Ralph Sadler and I will be in there most of the day praying for a Prince of Wales. Follow the back galleries out of the queen's secret door. I will leave the passage unlocked."

"In the midst of your pretense, perhaps you might actually want to offer a sincere prayer for my sister," Elizabeth said sharply.

He kissed her hard and full on the lips. "I don't have to. I know you will be there to watch over her."

Elizabeth wished she had a war-horse and a mace to cut a path through the throng of bodies gathered outside the queen's rooms. Finally, someone shouted: "It's the queen's sister, for God's sake let her through!"

"Edward, no need to look so out of sorts. It's not as though you are the one giving birth here," she said to her brother. Edward stood pacing outside of Jane's bedchamber. He rested his chin on his hand, mumbling to himself. Once inside Jane's bedchamber, it was stifling hot, and yet a maid stoked the fire even hotter. Elizabeth thought, there are too many people in here, tracking in too much filth. The king's physicians clustered together, while the midwives calmly folded linens. Jane's ladies gathered around the bed, holding the queen's hands or rubbing her feet, but otherwise doing nothing.

"Oh, thank God Lissie, it's you!" Jane threw her arms open. She heaved with another labor pain. "Mary, Mother of God," she wailed. "I cannot do this without you."

Elizabeth smoothed the sweat caked hair out of Jane's eyes. "I'm here. I will be with you the whole time. Here, squeeze my hand when the pains come." She kissed Jane's forehead. "You've got to stop fighting it, because this is going to go on for hours." Elizabeth glanced around the room. Why was everyone just standing about? "Water! We need more boiled water!" Elizabeth shouted. The Lady Mary sat across from Elizabeth, mumbling prayers into her rosary. We don't need a rosary, Elizabeth wanted to say, we need a proper physician and a clean midwife.

Elizabeth pinned an apron to her gown. She had brought a child into this world, had grunted and vomited and pissed herself to do it. She was no longer above throwing on an apron and hauling kettles of steaming water. She soaked a linen with hot water and laid it across Jane's heaving belly.

"Lady Mary, why are the king's physicians standing on the other side of the room as though we had the plague?" Elizabeth said quietly.

Mary looked up from her rosary, confused. "Because the queen's body is sacred," she said simply. She took in Elizabeth's blank look and added: "Her body, as consort to the king, is sacred. They are not allowed to touch her."

"She is consort to the king, but-" Elizabeth lowered her voice. "She is not of royal blood, she has not been anointed or crowned queen."

"Lissie, please," Jane said through clenched teeth. "Save the technicalities for Lord Cromwell's rooms." Her head rolled back on the pillow, and she sucked in short, panicky breaths. "Mary, get that box over there."

When Mary turned to get the little silver box off the mantle, Elizabeth put her mouth to Jane's ear. "I do not think you are well nursed here. I can get you help, better help."

Jane just shook her head and reached out for the box that Mary brought to her. She pulled out a rosary. "This belonged to your mother," she told Mary.

"I think she is here with us," Mary said. "I believe with all my heart she will help you." Jane desperately kissed the rosary as if it were a saint's relic. Elizabeth shook her head. If Katherine of Aragon was going to be the patron saint of this birthing, then God help them all, because most of her babies never even took a breath.

Elizabeth made herself useful by lugging heavy kettles of water in and out of Jane's bed chamber. On one of her trips to bus out fouled linen, she found Edward in deep consultation with Gardiner. They murmured with their heads together, pausing to look up every so often when Jane screamed.

"What is _he _doing here?" Elizabeth barked. The sight of Gardiner still made her ill, with his cruel fish eyes and translucent wormy skin.

"The king asked that his grace be present to witness the birth of the prince," Edward said. "To make sure everything is done according to protocol."

"We believe a solemn procession through the City is necessary to pray for the safety of the queen if she is still in labor by tomorrow, and God help us if she is still in labor tomorrow," Gardiner explained.

"And good intentions are supposed to help the queen deliver quickly?" Elizabeth spat. She hesitated for a moment. In the window enclave behind Edward and Gardiner, Elizabeth could see the peach hues of dusk—or was it sunset? Time had stopped in the birthing chamber. Edward noted her confusion.

"The sun has already set, and now it rises on a new day."

Elizabeth staggered under the realization that Jane had been in labor for a full day and night. She watched the light slide in through the window panes. Frustrated, she hurled the soiled linens into the fireplace.

"Well, these things take time, cannot be rushed. So stop planning Jane's dirge and make yourself useful!"

Hours later, the only things keeping Elizabeth on her feet were the small sips of cider and few biscuits she'd had in between comforting Jane and cleaning her sister as if she were an infant. Ursula and Elizabeth rested against the wall and sank down until their bottoms rested on their heels.

"How long was it for you?" Ursula asked quietly.

"I was not keeping time with an hour glass," Elizabeth said without opening her eyes. She sighed, "All I know is by the time the sun set and rose, I had my boy in my arms."

"Something is wrong, isn't it? But they-" Ursula jerked her head in the general direction of the midwives and doctors. "cannot admit they don't know what has gone wrong."

"They are charlatans and quacks," Elizabeth said bitterly. She watched Lady Mary mumble prayers. "And we need a real physician in here, not entreaties to a virgin."

"Please my lady, please," Mary begged Jane. "For the love of Jesus, do not give up!" Jane fell back against the pillows, meek as a lamb awaiting the slaughter. Something snapped in Elizabeth, and she jolted upright. She remembered Isabella telling her to never let a woman in labor give up, because once she did, all was lost. Elizabeth came to sit by Jane. She gripped her sister's hand fiercely and pressed it to her heart. The midwife peering between Jane's thighs looked up and shook her head. "She is no better," she said quietly.

"What does that mean, she is no better?" Elizabeth did not mean to bark out the question.

"The womb is not opening as it should." The midwife left the bed to speak with the physicians. Whatever the woman said caused one of the surgeons to unroll his bag of knifes. He examined a scalpel in the fire light.

"Put that away, for love of Christ!" Elizabeth cried. Jane squeezed her sister's hand.

"Please, please don't let them slice me open," Jane whispered. "Lissie, don't let me die here today."

"Jane, I am going to fetch help. I will be back as soon as I can, but promise me you will not give up." Jane nodded feebly and gasped at another pain. Elizabeth reached across for Mary's hand. "Lady Mary, do not let them butcher my sister like a hog. Even if you have to drape your body across her Majesty, don't let them come near her with their knives."

"Where are you going?" Mary whimpered.

"To get help!"

IV.

Cromwell blinked as the clouds rolled away to reveal a new dawn and a new day. He'd stopped keeping track of the hours of Jane's labor yesterday. He milled around his office, shuffling papers and straightening stacks of letters. For God's sake, where was Elizabeth? She was supposed to be keeping him updated, but he had not seen her for two days. He and Ralph Sadler gave up waiting around in his closet after the first day and night. Now, they worked out contingencies: Jane dies, Jane lives, Jane lives and the child dies, Jane dies and the child lives…

His chest tightened in what he believed to be guilt. Dear God, Thomas, he told himself, don't start growing a conscience; you are too old to start. But he and Jane were bound to one another, not just by marriage, but by debt. She owed him her throne, and he owed her most of his new titles. And he owed her Elizabeth. His long, fox ears perked up at the clatter of heels in the passages behind his office. Elizabeth let herself in without a word.

"Are we alone in here?" she asked quickly. She appeared almost…haunted. Her skin and lips were pale as a corpse. The only thing that stood out were her wide blue eyes.

"Just you, me, and the Devil makes three."

"You have to stop them," she said shortly. "Something has gone wrong with my sister's labor—I don't know what—so don't ask. But everyone is losing patience. The physicians are talking crazy. They are thinking about slicing her open while she is still alive." At that last sentence, Elizabeth's feet almost gave way. He caught her before she completely toppled over.

"Lissie, when was the last time you ate?"

"Oh, forget that! There's no time for that!" She slapped her palms against his chest and righted herself back up. "You must go to the king. You need to be the voice of reason, or at least stall for time." Her small fists clenched the fabric of his vest. "Thomas, don't let them slaughter her like a sow! Please, go to the king, and beg for her life. You owe her at least that much, and you know it." Then she pushed herself away and ran off into the dark passages like a madwoman.

"Where are you going?" he called after her.

"To get help!"

Elizabeth's frantic pace turned out to be warranted. In the time it took him to run to the king's privy chambers, Edward was already there, counseling the king. Henry slumped in the fur robe he had been wearing for the past two days.

"Your Majesty, I have talked to the physicians," Edward said as gently as he could. "In their opinion, there is not a great deal of time left. The baby is likely to die unless they cut open the queen's belly. In which case, it is almost certain the queen herself will die." Edward knelt next to the king and delivered the news like a gracious courtier. Henry peered through the hair that fell in his face, staring at nothingness.

"What exactly is their opinion based on?" Cromwell interrupted. "If they cannot examine the queen—"

"Cromwell, I don't remember inviting you to this gathering," Henry snapped. "Shouldn't you be tinkering with your counting board or some such nonsense." Henry lolled his head against the fur of his robe. "Well, since you are here, you may as well remain," he sniffed.

Edward threw a look over his shoulder that said: Piss off. Cromwell crossed his arms, cocked an eyebrow, and entrenched himself for a long fight.

"Your Majesty may thus have to decide," Edward continued. "Between the life of the mother, or of the child."

"But that is a decision that does not need to be made right at this moment," Cromwell added. Good God, he thought disgustedly, another queen's life pinned to Henry Tudor's decision.

"Are you questioning the judgment of the king's own physicians?"

"No, my lord Beauchamp-" Then Cromwell stopped himself. "Actually, yes, that is exactly what I am doing." He moved closer to the king. "Majesty, we may be very near the edge of an irrevocable decision based on incomplete information."

"Are you suggesting that I am misinforming his Majesty?" Edward shot back.

"No, I am counseling patience over rashness."

"Whose side are you on here, Cromwell?"

"I am merely speaking for your sister, who is not here to advocate for her own life." An edge crept into Cromwell's voice as his own patience wore thin. The queen's own brother and husband were ready to gut her open, in order to release a child that may or may not be a prince. A child that may already be dead.

"Cromwell, this is a private matter," Edward began.

"ENOUGH!" Henry roared. He bolted forward in his chair, only to collapse back against it. "Two hens pecking at one another," he muttered. "Get out, the both of you. Just get out, and let me think my own thoughts."

They backed away reverently, but once out of the king's presence, Edward turned on Cromwell.

"Did Lissie put you up to this?" he demanded. Cromwell chose not to answer the question directly.

"Edward, for common decency's sake, why are you even entertaining the idea of gutting your sister?"

"Oh, fuck all to you too!" Edward snorted. "Why do you even care? What is it to you if Jane lives or dies? You probably have list of dozens of replacement queens."

Of course Cromwell had names because Cromwell always had a plan. He wanted to tell Edward that he would very much like to stick a German princess in Jane's place. But once word spread across the continent that Henry Tudor was a wife-killer, the princes of Europe would hide their women folk in cellars, and England would still be without a queen and without an heir.

V.

"Do you understand what you are asking me to do, the risk you are asking me to take?" Isabella's plain mousy features intensified as she thought furiously. "If I cannot examine the queen, then I cannot know the dose she can tolerate. If I make the potion too strong—"

"It will be on my conscience, not yours!" Elizabeth exclaimed. "Please, I would not be asking this of you if I thought there was some other way."

"Swear to me that whatever happens, you will not come looking for answers from me. I have escaped the stake and the fire too many times to come near it again." Isabella took Elizabeth's hand and held it to her heart.

"I swear on the life of my son that whatever happens will rain on my conscience and my head," Elizabeth said.

"Very well then," Isabella nodded. "So what size of woman is the queen?"

"About half a head taller than me, but thinner."

While Isabella measured and ground herbs, Elizabeth rocked Harr's cradle. She ached to nurse him and hold him against her skin, but he slept so peacefully that she could not bring herself to wake him when it was she herself who needed the comforting, not Harr. She kissed the tip of his nose before turning to leave.

"How will I know the potion is working?" Elizabeth asked.

"Within a quarter of an hour, the labor cramps will intensify. God save her Majesty. And God save you if they catch you with this."

Elizabeth slipped through a hidden door into Jane's rooms. She smoothed her skirts and slowed her walk, even though her heart pounded like cannon fire. She made a pretense of folding linens before sidling up to a table laden with water and wine. Elizabeth made a quick check over her shoulder to make sure no one was watching. Once she was sure all eyes were glued on Jane's heaving belly, she dumped the small vial into a goblet. She cut the liquid with a splash of wine and filled the rest of the cup with water.

"Here, Jane, drink this." Elizabeth put the cup to her sister's lips with a knowing look. Jane winced at the pungent smell, but she drank deeply. "It's going to be all right, Jane," Elizabeth whispered in her ear. "I promise."

Within the hour, a midwife had a fresh sheet draped over Jane's thighs. Elizabeth sat behind Jane, whispering that they were close, so very close. Jane clawed at the sheets and let out an unholy wail. A scream punctured the silence, followed by a hiccup and another scream. Dear God, Elizabeth thought, that's the sound of a baby, a live baby. The infant's cries could have drowned out the whole of the Emperor's munitions, and silenced the battle cry of a thousand men.

"Jesus Christ," the midwife whispered. "Jesus Christ, it's a son." The entire room looked around and sank to their knees in stunned silence. The midwife wrapped the bawling prince in a blanket and cut the cord. "It's a boy, for God's sake, someone tell the king he has a son."

Jane's arms reached out. "Please, let me hold him. I want to hold my son," she mumbled through exhaustion. But the midwife wrapped another fur around the baby and passed him to Jane Boleyn. She held the screaming bundle over her head like a trophy. Elizabeth gasped, terrified that she would drop him.

"The king has a son! In the name of God and St. George, England has a prince! Viscount Beauchamp, present his Highness, Prince Edward to his Majesty," someone yelled, probably Gardiner. As a procession followed the infant out of the birthing chamber, Jane tried to roll off the bed, but Elizabeth held her fast. The queen waived her arms as a drowned man signaling for help. Elizabeth wrapped her own arms around Jane's flailing limbs.

"I want to see my boy!" Jane cried out. "Lissie, tell them I want to see my boy! Bring my boy back!"

"Be easy Jane, be easy. They will bring him back. But you need to rest." Elizabeth eased Jane's back until it rested on her shoulder. Jane started to struggle upright, but the fight went out of her.

"I want my boy back," Jane whispered hoarsely against Elizabeth's heart. "I want to hold my boy."

Elizabeth remained there for another hour and held Jane until she fell asleep. As she slowly made her way back to her own rooms, she hesitated in front of the great hall. The wine was already flowing and groups of dancers were taking their place. She stepped aside to allow a servant carrying a roast piglet to pass. Tonight should be a celebration, she thought. Tonight is for the Seymours. Yet, Elizabeth felt strangely numb. Jane had given the king his heart's desire and secured the dynasty, to say nothing of her own personal safety. Even still, the victory struck Elizabeth as hollow when she remembered Jane calling out for her own son. It was the cry of a mother, not of a queen.

When Elizabeth finally stumbled into her own bedchamber, it was to find Cromwell seated by the fire. He watched impassively as the servants hauled in water for his bath. She imagined her own face mirrored the uncertain marble mask that had overcome his features, as if he could not decide on which emotion, so he settled on blankness.

He did a double take when he saw her. "I didn't expect to see you tonight. I thought you would be roistering in the hall with everyone else."

"England is celebrating the birth of her savior. Yet all I want to do is hold my own son," Elizabeth shrugged. She felt inexplicably shy in front of him, overly conscious of the fact that this would be her first night back in marital bed since Harr was born. "Well, I suppose I should go check on Harr, see how he's getting on." She made a move to leave, but he caught her hand.

"He's fast asleep. His nurse fed him, changed his nappy. You look as though you could stand the same."

"Thomas, at my rate, I think a few missed meals are not the worst thing that could happen to me."

He never did ask her what sort of "help" she sought for her sister. He could have pounced on her like a barrister, dragging the story out of her, sentence by sentence. Instead, he sat her down in the bath next to him and washed her feet. When he spoke it was only to ask her to tip her head back so he could rinse her hair. She leaned back against him and exhaled the silence.

"They just took him away," she volunteered after a while. "He was born, and they took him away. Jane never got to hold him."

"She is the queen. Her son doesn't belong to her. He is property of the state."

Elizabeth slapped at the soapy water. "If someone tried to take my child, I'd-I'd kill him."

"You would not have to, I would do it for you. But Dove," he tipped her chin back to look her in the eyes. "Your sister is not a private person. Her life, her children, are no longer her own."

Elizabeth did not remember making it out of the bath or sinking under the sheets with Cromwell. She awoke shortly before dawn with her face pressed against his chest. The last thing she recalled was Cromwell admonishing her that everything about Jane's life was no longer her own. Elizabeth wondered if Cromwell ever mentioned that to Jane when he told her he could make her a queen.

VI.

He was christened Prince Edward VI, Duke of Cornwall and Earl of Chester, on October 15th. Every modest chapel and grand cathedral in England rang their bells and sang Te Deum for the infant savior. The king ordered a 2,000 cannon salute in addition to the impressive fireworks display. Wine flowed freely through London, although some whispered behind their hands that Lord Cromwell had plied them with better food and drink.

Elizabeth did not attend her nephew's christening. Instead, she sat at her sister's bedside, trying to coax her to eat. Jane's skin and lips had taken on a matte, waxy tint. Whether from melancholy or exhaustion, Elizabeth could not be sure. She spooned up some custard and raised it to Jane's lips.

"You need to eat, Jane," she coaxed. "Just a few bites for me, and then I can just leave the rest of it here if you want some more."

"Lissie, how often do you see your Harry?" Jane's head and shoulders drooped under the weight of her crown.

"Every night. Listen, if you don't want the custard, we can order you up something else. What about egg puddings? You like those-"

"Do you know how many times I have seen Edward since he was born? Once."

"You will see him today, after his christening. Once we get you back on your feet, you can see him more often." Elizabeth determinedly pushed the spoon towards Jane's mouth.

"How is it, I mean to nurse Harry, how does it feel?" Jane's eyes told her to talk, even if the answer might hurt either of them.

"Things go still." Elizabeth snuck a spoonful of custard between Jane's lips. "The rest of the world falls away, so that it's only the both of us." Elizabeth realized that as long as she kept talking, Jane would keep eating. "Everything goes quiet, a bit like praying."

"I have barely prayed since Edward was born. Selfish I know, but he's all I can think about."

A week later, Elizabeth was the only lady in waiting in Jane's bedchamber. The queen had been complaining of a headache, so Elizabeth put her to bed and sent the other ladies to dinner in the great hall. She pulled up a stool and little table close to the fire, so she could get more light to do her drawing. Lately, she had taken to sketching her own gown designs that she promised herself she would wear—once she found her waistline again.

"They are taking him away from me." Jane stood before her, swaying slightly; Elizabeth had not even heard her get up. The firelight behind Jane illuminated her outline, blurring and blending edges until Jane looked like a haunted angel. She took a step towards Elizabeth.

"They are taking Edward away from me," she repeated. "They are installing him in his own court at Hampton." Jane's body convulsed with violent tremors. She lurched forward and vomited into the fireplace. Elizabeth tossed away the table and stood to catch her. Jane was slick with sweat and so hot to the touch, she almost felt icy. Elizabeth slung half of her sister onto her back and staggered towards the bed. When she dumped Jane onto the mattress, Elizabeth splashed cold water on her sister. Jane's eyes fluttered before rolling back in her head.

"Jane! Jane! Wake up!" she yelled. "Jane!" She slapped and pinched the queen of England, but Jane never came back fully. Throughout that night and the next day, Jane would return to herself intermittently. Most of the time, she wrestled in a violent sleep. Sometimes when she awoke, she would grab at whoever was nearest, pleading, "Why did you let this happen to me? Why didn't you stop this?" Elizabeth learned to stand an arm's length away.

A few hours before midnight, someone summoned Jane's pastor to administer Extreme Unction. An hour after that, one of the physicians finally worked up the courage to tell Henry Tudor that he should say goodbye to his queen. Before everyone filed out of the queen's room to give the king some privacy, Elizabeth kissed Jane's salty skin. She could think of nothing to say, except: "I love you. I will see you soon."

The Lady Mary led a procession into the chapel, but Elizabeth ducked behind a door to escape to her own rooms. A nurse was just folding Harr into a fresh nappy when Elizabeth came into the nursery. She took in Elizabeth's red-rimmed eyes and handed Harr off without another word. He cried himself purple, despite having a full belly and a clean nappy. Elizabeth rocked him against her, but his body trembled with sobs.

"Shh, shh, please, my love. Please sleep," she whispered. "Please." It was a single word, sometimes a question, but usually a prayer. "Please," she said again. The prayer spilled out of her aloud and in English. "Please, God. Please do not take Jane. She deserves better. Dear God, please don't take my sister away from us."

Elizabeth's own cries took over Harr's. He quieted as she pressed her face against his. Elizabeth laid them down next to the fire. She held her son close. A woman had to keep all that she loved close by, lest someone try to snatch it from her. Elizabeth hovered on the brink of sleep when she heard heavy footsteps behind her. She snuggled closer to Harr.

"Is my sister dead?" she asked hoarsely. Cromwell laid down across from her, with Harr in between them.

"Her majesty passed shortly after midnight." He placed a ringed hand over Harr's sleeping chest. Her own hand wove through his, their wedding rings side by side.

"Was the king with her?"

"Yes."

"You know, she just wanted to hold her boy."


	19. Chapter 19

**A/N: A "Bourse" is essentially a stock exchange, but they also traded debt. Read about it in "The Ascent of Money."**

**Anna Taure: I could not let your "Jesus Christ on a bicycle" line go to waste. I hope you don't mind.**

**Finally, the events in the series are described as taking place in 1538, but my artistic license has everything squeezed into the final months of 1537.**

Elizabeth had one blessed moment of blankness when she awoke. She did not remember climbing into her own bed. She certainly did not remember why she fell asleep in her gown. Then it hit her: Jane died last night. Elizabeth rolled off the bed and stifled a dry retch. She sank to her knees, keening, "Oh God, Jane." Through her tear swollen eye lashes, she caught sight of two of her junior maids.

"What are you both looking at?" she scrubbed at her eyelids with the back of her hand. Then she immediately regretted sounding so harsh.

"We thought you might want your bath this morning." They peered around the bedpost, one young, unsure face on top of another.

"Let me see to Harry first. Then I'll smarten myself up." She hauled herself to standing. The girls caught each others' eyes and stared at their shoes. "Just tell me," Elizabeth mumbled.

"Lord Cromwell told us to tell you that the dressmaker would be visiting this afternoon to-" the girl stopped.

"To sew my mourning clothes," Elizabeth finished. She dropped against the bed. "I don't even have any proper mourning gowns. Not even from when my father died." Her voice trailed off. "Very well—what must be done, must be done. Could one of you bring Harry to me? He can have his breakfast while I wait for my bath."

Elizabeth sat half naked on the bed, while Harr suckled. He stuck his arms up every so often, and Elizabeth would catch his squishy hands. When he gripped her fingers, he felt very warm, and very much alive.

II.

The king took the blow head on, as if he were once again a jousting champion. Once the queen's hand went limp and slipped out of his, Henry squared his shoulders, and his aquamarine eyes went clear as rain. He declared that Lady Mary would stand as chief mourner at Jane's funeral. He ordered that all the mirrors and gilded fixtures in the palace be draped with black silk. Courtiers whispered behind their hand that Henry was taking the loss of his queen with magnificent grace and quiet composure—as befitting a king.

Cromwell didn't believe any of it for a minute.

Sooner, rather than later, Henry's temper would catch alight; the king hated dealing with unpleasant things, even more when he could not delegate the discomfort to Cromwell. The king's shock provided a nice enough alibi, cloaking the desperate explosion that Cromwell sensed could not be far. He took it upon himself to be his king's shadow. Cromwell told himself that he often faced the storm of the king's wrath, so why stop now?

Henry accorded Jane all the honors of a full state funeral. After all, she had died in the service of the English crown like any soldier defending Calais. The cathedral was draped in black silk embroidered with Jane's badge of arms. Cromwell vaguely remembered suggesting to Jane that she ought to choose the phoenix as her emblem. Not because it appealed to his poet's sensibility (and he was anything except poetic) but because Jane had wanted a unicorn. Cromwell had told Edward to break it to his sister that a unicorn was utterly ridiculous. Then again, Jane was no phoenix either; her body lay cold as the marble surrounding it and would never again breathe life.

The night following the funeral, the king told Cromwell he wanted to visit Jane's bed chamber one last time. He passively surveyed Jane's ladies as they packed up the dead queen's linens and gowns. His eyes roved over Ursula's outline, now cut sharp in black, before moving onto Elizabeth. She wore her mourning gown extremely well, and her pale skin sparkled. But why exactly was the bodice of her gown cut an inch lower than common decency dictated? A bead of sweat snaked down Cromwell's neck as he watched Henry watch Elizabeth.

"Lissie, it would appear you have grown up," Henry said gruffly. "No longer the wild young thing come down to us from Yorkshire."

"Thank you, your Majesty." Elizabeth's shoulders stiffened at the attention. She kept her thick lashes lowered over the work of pulling out Jane's coat of arms from the bed hangings.

"You look well, my Lady Cromwell," Henry continued. Cromwell saw Elizabeth and Ursula share a woman's look between them. He also could not help but notice that Elizabeth blanched at mention of her married name.

"My wife has born the loss of the queen with great dignity and strength," Cromwell interjected. Jesus Christ on a pony, Cromwell thought. Was Henry trying to seduce his own wife, with Jane barely cold? Almost reading his thoughts, Henry held Cromwell's gaze for a moment before turning back to Elizabeth.

"Cromwell, I meant that she looks well after the birth of your son," Henry said impatiently. "It's not as though she dissolved into fat." He took a few valiant strides towards Elizabeth, doing his best to disguise his limp. "Are these some of the queen's gowns?" Henry pointed to a few dressed strewn over the bed. He reached out to grasp one of her strawberry-blonde tendrils.

"Yes, your Majesty," Elizabeth mumbled. She looked past the king to catch Cromwell's eye, her own face taut with panic. Cromwell edged towards them, his ringed hand tightened into a fist of its own accord. Still holding Cromwell's dark eyes with her own, Elizabeth minutely shook her head.

"You know Lissie," Henry began. He yanked on one of her curls. "I look at you, and I see nothing of your sister in you." His face hardened, and his full lips thinned into a sneer. He shoved her away. "Get out. All of you out. OUT!"

Normally, when Henry's eyes bulged and the veins in his neck protruded, Cromwell was more than happy to taken Henry up on his offer to exit the premises immediately. But tonight was different; the king seemed a little wilder. Henry withdrew his sword from its scabbard. He used the point of the blade to nudge through the carefully laid out dresses on the bed. No doubt Jane had had it in mind to leave her gowns to the Lady Mary, and Cromwell could not say he minded Lady Mary in hand-me-downs.

"She's gone," Henry said softly. He looked at Cromwell, eyes brimming with tears. "She is gone, and I cannot have her back." Suddenly, Henry held his sword high above his head, like an axeman coming in for the kill. He plunged the blade into layers of silk and damask. "She! Left! Me!" Henry punctuated each word with another stab at Jane's dresses. "SHE LEFT ME! SHE LEFT ME! Who dares to leave me? LEAVE ME? NO ONE LEAVES ME!" Henry tossed his sword to the side and flung himself onto the bed. He muffled his sobs with pieces of shredded taffeta. "Oh, she's gone, she's gone."

Cromwell's hand must have hovered over Henry's shoulder for a full minute before deciding to gently pat him. After a while, Henry's shoulders stilled and flattened against his back. He drew in a few ragged breaths and composed himself enough to speak sensibly.

"You once told me your wife and daughters died. Someone else told me you lost all three on the same day. Speak frankly Cromwell, does it get better?"

"It becomes less unpleasant as time goes on." For once, Cromwell could not equivocate.

"But you have married again, will have more children again. Are you back to normal?"

"Any day now, the doctors tell me." The only thing Cromwell hated more than wasting money was discussing his personal life. He hastily filled a mug with water and passed it to the king, hoping to stop the questions.

"A thought occurred to me Cromwell." Henry flopped over on his back and drained the mug. "You and me, we have seen out three queens. Three." He smoothed his hair back. Cromwell offered the king his hand and pulled Henry to standing. They stood eye to eye. "Three queens have died on our watch, Cromwell. What accursed men we must be."

In a decision that Cromwell would later question, he asked that Henry's privy servants fetch the king's fool, Will Somers, thinking that Henry could use a laugh. Had Cromwell known that the joke would be on him, he would have just assumed tucked the king into bed himself.

III.

Elizabeth buttoned her satin nightgown all the way up to her throat. She wriggled down under the covers, until the furs came to her chin. And yet, she could not get warm. Surely if she was shivering, then Harr was probably chilled as well. What if the nurse forgot to stoke the fire in the nursery? After running a hundred nightmare scenarios through her mind, she threw off the covers and went to check on Harr again.

She heaved a sigh of relief to find that her fears were only in her mind; Harr and his nurse snored in tandem, while a cheerful fire roared. She gave one last wistful look over her shoulder, wishing it was she cuddled next to Harr, before turning back to her own bed. Her path intersected with Cromwell's as she padded down the hall.

"Early night for you?" she asked.

"For once, yes. So which worst case scenario were you checking on tonight: the one where Harr's nurse suffocates him or the one where Harr roles out of his cradle?"

"The one where he freezes because he does not have enough blankets," she said curtly. Then she reminded herself to soften towards Cromwell. Certainly he knew as well as anyone about tiny lives just slipping away. "Anyway, thank you for writing that letter to my brother, Tom, for me," she added. Francis Bryan had convinced her younger brother Tom to go cardinal hunting on the continent with him. Elizabeth had tried to write to her brother that Jane had died, but the quill just sat in her hands and the parchment remained blank.

"I have a penchant for breaking bad news to others. It's a talent I wish I did not have." He shrugged, but then his gaze sharpened. "Pity you were not buttoned all the way up to your chin earlier this evening. Might have saved us all a scene."

"Oh, piss off, Thomas!" she huffed. She flung herself under the blankets and furs. Why did Cromwell have to be, well, Cromwell? "I suppose it is my fault that the king, drunk on wine and grief, put his hands on me," she snapped.

"You might have at least said, 'no thank you, your Majesty,'" Cromwell said through a layer of black linen as he pulled his shirt off.

"You might have done something, instead of just standing there," she muttered against her pillow.

"You shook your head 'no.'"

"Because a physical assault on the king did not strike me as prudent. We barely survived your fireworks escapade." Elizabeth sat up and hugged her knees. "Thomas: my sister is dead, and I am tired and sad. Pick a jealous fight with me in a few months time—I'll probably be more responsive then."

He had the courtesy to look sheepish as he sank under the covers. Elizabeth wanted to slap him, but she also wanted to nestle against his warm, lean body and breathe his familiar smell. She chose the latter option and inched into his arms. His body forgave her in that instant as he curled around her. He seemed to know to tread lightly around her form, to avoid her milk swollen breasts and the belly that made her self-conscious. She wove her arms through his and pulled him closer. His body warmed the bed, so at least he had his uses when he was not plotting or scheming.

"I know your heart aches for your sister," Cromwell whispered against her ear. "But you have me, you have Harr. You're not alone." He kissed the tears forming in the corner of her eyes.

"Aren't there ever times when something sits so heavy in your heart, that you feel you cannot take another breath without screaming the truth of it?" She took a shaky breath, thinking about the tonic she gave Jane. "The worst part is that the one who was alone was Jane. Sometimes I think to be queen must be the loneliest occupation for a woman."

"I think kings and queens learn to live alone in their heads. So perhaps that is why one should be born to such a position."

Elizabeth rolled over to nuzzle her face against his neck. She thought about telling him that he lived alone in his head too, but they both knew that. So, it was probably better left unsaid. Oddly enough, their companionable silence calmed her insides. She almost fell asleep with her chin resting on his stubbly neck when he surprised her by kissing along her shoulder.

"I am sorry I am a jealous man. I want you all to myself," he said.

"To tell the truth, I probably want you to want me all to yourself," she admitted. She rolled herself under him so she could look him in the eyes.

"Well, at least we have never been indifferent to one another."

She could agree with that much. On any given day—at least before Harr entered the picture—either one of them would be itching for a fight, a fuck, or usually both. Now that Elizabeth was churched and back in her marriage bed, she didn't feel much for fighting. She wrapped her arms around him.

"I missed sleeping next to you," he said. "Did you miss me as I missed you?" He cocked his head, looking so vulnerable and unsure of himself that it was easy for Elizabeth to reach up and catch his bottom lip in a kiss. She opened her mouth to offer her tongue; he did not ask for an invitation to brush his hands up her nightgown. As she knotted the fabric around her waist, she realized she wanted him inside of her less out of lust, but out of a primal need for connection, a universal instinct to reach across to another body and not feel alone.

He did not enter her completely, instead taking her with shallow, gentle strokes. Elizabeth knew this was far from perfect, passionate lovemaking, but she wanted safety tonight, not bliss. In the kiss they never broke, she could taste wine, dried fruit, and cinnamon. He came quickly, and Elizabeth exhaled a little at the flooding of warmth inside her. She pulled a leg around his hips to keep him close as he carefully rolled them onto their sides. His ink-stained hands enveloped her cold fingers, so he could hold them close to his heart for warmth.

"I am very glad that I share a bed with you, Thomas Cromwell," she whispered.

IV.

Edward would never admit it to anyone, but he was relieved to see a fellow Seymour- his brother, Tom-walking up the boat launch at Hampton Court. He had not spoken with Elizabeth since Jane's funeral, and since Lissie would not shut up about her little Harry, Edward had not extended her an invitation to dine with the infant Prince Edward at Hampton Court. Edward's good humor evaporated when he saw Francis Bryan trailing behind Tom. He stole a look at Anne. She licked her lips and parted them a little as she took in Francis's swagger.

"Contain yourself, darling," Edward hissed. He threw open his arms, and to his complete surprise, he tightly embraced Tom. "Good to have you back. Terrible circumstances."

"God bless our Jane," Tom said. "I thought since Sir Francis's mother, Lady Bryan, is in residence, we might all dine together."

"Yes, my lord Beauchamp," Francis smirked. "Thought we might all sit down together."

"Like one happy family," Anne finished.

Actually, supper turned out to be entirely bearable to everyone involved—mostly due to Tom's stream of chatter: Italian cities, Italian food, Italian women. Once the food dwindled, and the diners retired to a private sitting room without servants, the conversation lost its banal façade.

"Did you bring back those books?" Edward asked. Tom responded by tossing a leather satchel across the rug to Edward. He practically knocked noses with Anne as they dove in simultaneously.

"Ha! The things you read in there will curl your nipples," Francis cracked. "The ideas in those books make Tyndale and Luther look like the bloody Bishop of Rome. I daresay our Lord Cromwell might even blush."

"Nothing is too extreme for Cromwell," Lady Bryan said between sips of wine. She wagged a bony finger in the air. "I don't care for his pride, but he keeps Papists like Gardiner in check."

"You go into any bourse on the continent, and it's all 'Cromwell this, Cromwell that, I knew Thomas Cromwell when he worked the counting house in Venice.'" Tom rolled his eyes.

"But it's more than that." Francis dropped his perpetual irreverence and leaned in towards Edward and Anne, inviting them to do the same. "Tom and I started asking around the bourses. The bankers and merchants there told us that Cromwell is brokering most of the loans coming to England from abroad. He insists on interest that is a little above market, then skims some off the top for himself. He has taken it into his power to arrange who loans to who."

"But with all the treasure seized from the religious houses, why do Englishmen need loans from abroad?" Edward asked. "And does the king approve of that kind of usury?"

"First, the king probably has no idea, and if he did, I don't know if he would understand it—God knows I did not understand the scheme the first dozen times it was explained to me. Second, Cromwell is giving kick-backs to his banker friends in Europe by advertising England as the new trade center, ripe with opportunity for foreigners to make money."

"Think about it Edward," Anne said tiredly. "Nobles like Suffolk are perpetually in debt: do you think they want their fellow Englishmen to know they gamble and whore away every pound that comes into their hands?"

"You wouldn't think it, but the bourses were wetting themselves during the Northern uprising. Thought England was teetering towards another civil war." Tom smiled at the thought of urine soaked trousers. "In Antwerp, Bruges, Amsterdam, all in a panic because some pilgrims disrupted the wool trade."

"We found out that Cromwell has been in contact with the major banking families, writing to them more often than he writes to foreign sovereigns." Francis turned serious again. He pulled a letter from his doublet. "We swiped this off the desk of a Medici accountant," Francis explained. He handed the letter to Anne. Edward recognized Cromwell's seal on it immediately.

" 'This realm goes from good peace daily, to better and better," Anne read. " 'The traitors have been executed: the Lord Darcy at Tower Hill, Aske hung above the dungeon at York, the rest were executed at Tyburn.'" Anne looked away from the letter briefly. "Good God, you can practically hear Cromwell's smugness dripping through the Latin. Anyway, the letter goes on to say: 'So, as far as we can perceive, the cantankerous hearts have been weeded away.'"

"That man thrives on order and control as if it were mother's milk," Lady Bryan remarked.

"Pity if someone were to sprinkle a little chaos into the mix," Edward said softly.

V.

Jane's ladies trudged through the next month like a funeral march. Finally, to break the numb melancholy, someone suggested to Elizabeth that she bring Harr, so all the ladies could see him. That morning, Elizabeth arrived in Jane's bedchamber with Harr and his wet nurse in tow. The women tickled his cheeks, praised his long eye-lashes, and ruffled his furry head. Harr was beside himself with the attention, doling out smiles as favors.

"Now, don't let of this fuss go to your head," Ursula admonished. She passed him back to Elizabeth.

"He is the very image of his father," Jane Boleyn said. Then she slyly added: "That must give you some peace of mind, Lissie, given your reputation." Elizabeth had a vicious retort at the ready when one of the king's pages padded into the room.

"His Majesty requests the company of Lady Misseldon," he announced. Ursula couldn't meet Elizabeth's eyes, but she followed the page with her head held high as any woman without a reputation to live down.

"Usually has the decency not to send for her until at least after midnight," Jane Boleyn sniffed.

True, the king did not like his mistresses until well after supper, but it was not the king that sent for Ursula. She arrived at Henry's presence chamber to find Cromwell and the king's fool, Will Somers, in stony silence.

"Ah, give it a rest, Cromwell." Will shook his head.

"The king sent for me?" Ursula asked.

"No, his Highness Cromwell sent for you under the king's name," Will hooted.

"Will," Cromwell began. "There are not many enjoyable things that come with being Lord Privy Seal, but acting under the king's name and with the king's authority is one of them."

"I told you! The king will see no one, not you, not this pot of honey! No one!"

"You expect me to believe that the king will see no one, except you?"

"Could someone explain to me what is going on here?" Ursula cut in. "I understand that I am not here for a late afternoon romp-"

"Surely, Lady Misseldon, if a man had a very exacting sense of humor, perhaps you could overlook an age difference of say—"

"A hundred years," Cromwell finished for Will. "Lady Misseldon, this is a sensitive situation, but I just need you to go into his Majesty's bed chamber and talk to him."

"Just talk?" Ursula clarified.

"Well, if you are not back in fifteen minutes, I think it is safe to say you are not just talking," Will cracked.

"See if his Majesty will unburden himself to you-"

"Then just come and tell Cromwell what his Majesty told you in confidence." Will folded his arms. "Christ, Cromwell. We used to have priests for this sort of thing until you hung them all. Mistresses as confessionals? You Lutherans really don't have a care for your soul."

"Just go in, Ursula," Cromwell said tiredly. "I am giving you an hour."

"An entire hour?" Will asked. "Wonder your wife is not just bow-legged."

Ursula gave them both a cheeky salute before charging into the royal bedchamber without a royal invitation. She returned within seconds with an apologetic shrug. They stood there quietly for a moment: the mistress, the minister, and the fool.

"I am sorry, my lord," Ursula said. "But the king said he wished to be left utterly alone, and to send Will back in."

"Ha! I told you, Cromwell. You just assume everyone is lying like you," Will huffed. He turned to go back in the bedchamber and snuck a kiss past Ursula before she could do a single thing about it. She shuddered.

"Can't you do anything about that?" she asked.

"Will? No, unfortunately that is his job." He reached into his money-belt, but Ursula stopped him.

"I know, I know. I tell you if anything changes, I tell you if his Majesty summons me. You know, my lord, you do not need to have everyone on your payroll. You would be surprised what you can get if you just ask nicely."

VI.

Like a lightening bolt in a clear blue sky, one of Cromwell's pages dropped a note in his lap that Robert Packington, a member of Parliament who could always be counted upon to tow the Cromwellian line, had been murdered in broad daylight. He casually tossed the note in the fire and continued his conversation with the Italian banker seated across from him. He asked about old Frescobaldi, if his son was any good in the business, if Italians were still interested in English wool futures. Cromwell sweat under his robes, but he did not let his cheerful Italian slip for a moment. When he finally sent the banker on his way, with an armful of new contracts and loans, Cromwell threw his chair aside. He stomped up and down his offices, muttering curses that his more well-born clerks had probably never dreamed up. He dunked his head into a basin of ice water and then attempted a civilized conversation.

"Have we caught the villain?" he asked his secretary, Wriothesley.

"No, my Lord. He ran off into Cheapside," Wriothesley replied. Cromwell watched him calmly scribble away and wanted to ask him how he could be so fucking nonchalant. "The Sergeant at Arms has his men all over the area," Wriothesley continued.

"Pray God they catch the villain." Cromwell seated himself at his desk and hoped his panic did not show. "For I am sure that Mr. Packington was in every way an innocent victim." Innocent or not, and Cromwell knew Packington was no lamb of God, Cromwell still counted on Packington's vote.

"Then why was he killed?" Wriothesley asked mildly. Cromwell sensed the sharpness in the question, rather than Wriothesley's usual bland tone. For the first time, he wondered whose side Mr. Wriothesley was on.

"I'm sure to send a message to me. I am not short of enemies, Mr. Wriothesley. There is nothing more difficult to carry out then or initiate a 'new order of things.'" What Cromwell really wanted to say was that there was nothing more difficult than being a new man with new ideas.

"Then you think Bishop Gardiner might be behind this, or Lord Suffolk?"

My, my, you came up with those names rather quickly, Cromwell thought. He glanced up at Wriothesley's expectant face. "I don't speculate," he said firmly. He eased himself back against his great chair. "What I will say is that there are dark forces at work both inside and outside the court. They must be defeated. We must be careful not to act until we are completely sure of who they are, and what they want."

Packington struck Cromwell as a wild card. Suffolk was too dense to sit and figure out whose votes Cromwell needed for which bills. Francis Bryan was apolitical, and a reformer to boot. Bishop Gardiner fought every breath Cromwell drew, and yet somehow Cromwell suspected that Gardiner was not brazen enough for an attack like this. Edward Seymour? But that made no sense. Edward was a reformer, religious and otherwise. Yet he also had blank, hungry eyes that simply wanted more. To stop his mind from running in a thousand directions at once, Cromwell decided to change tack.

"In the meantime, we must set to work finding a new bride for the king. It's true he has an heir at last. But that is scarcely sufficient. To be safe, he must produce another," he went on conversationally. In truth, he felt more than a little embarrassed about canvassing a replacement for Lissie's sister while she cried into her pillow at night. But this was statecraft: a man ought to leave common decency at the door with his muddy boots.

"How is the king?" For all the passion Wriothesley showed, he may as well have been drawing up those futures contracts for wool.

"He's shut himself away." Cromwell shook his head. "Some say for grief, that he's all broken." He was not so sure it was grief so much as shock that a woman might actually leave Henry Tudor first. "And will have none attend him, but _one_." Cromwell accented the last word with disgust, but also to show that Henry had frozen _everyone _out, not just Cromwell.

"Who is that?"

"Will Somers," Cromwell mumbled.

"Beg pardon, I did not hear. Who was that?"

"Will. Somers."

"The fool?"

"Yes. The fool." Cromwell ground his teeth. He rummaged around his desk for those cinnamon sticks his doctors told him to gnaw on. He had been replaced by the king's fool. Something told Cromwell he would need a much stronger remedy than cinnamon sticks.

He later thanked God that he made the uncharacteristic decision to drink his wine unwatered for the rest of the day. It was not even dinner time when another note dropped in Cromwell's lap to tell him he had yet another corpse on his hands. He surveyed the damage with the sergeant at arms.

"Who is he?" Cromwell looked at the angelic body as the sergeant threw back the blanket to reveal a young man, rolled out flat and cold on a wood table.

"Sir Gawan Carew."

Cromwell did not recognize the name or the face, and he never forgot names or faces, especially if they belonged to people who could be of use or harm to him. He glanced over the body again.

"Why was he killed?"

"It may have been for a gambling debt, my lord, _may have been_. We are still investigating."

A knife blade of pain pierced between Cromwell's eyes and sharpened into a migraine. He closed his eyes against the pain of the dim light.

"So, you have not found the killer?" he clenched his teeth.

"He may have been one of my lord Sussex's retainers," the sergeant offered. Good God man, Cromwell thought, if you don't know, then say you don't know.

"It's illegal to carry arms at court while the king is in residence. The penalties are severe. What about my friend, Mr. Packington, have you found his killer?"

"No."

"No." Cromwell hardened his jaw and narrowed his eyes. " It seems to me that as the man appointed to keep order at court, you are failing in your duties." He made no attempt to disguise the edge in his voice. "I trust you will apprehend the villain otherwise _you _will pay the price for _your failures_."

"Yes, my lord," the sergeant said quietly. Later, Cromwell would always think that if he had known the sergeant was going to be skewered like a suckling pig the next morning, he would have been a little kinder to the man.

VII.

Elizabeth held Harr to her chest, walking up and down the hallway of her rooms. She cupped the back of his head while his chin lolled on her neck. He'd launched into a screaming fit and only quieted with the steady march of Elizabeth's dance up and down the hall. If she stood for even a moment, he would start up again. She inhaled the sweet, milky smell of his skin, and lost herself in the steady rhythm of her footsteps. In the quiet, she heard the most unexpected sound: a voice. No, two voices. Coming from Cromwell's private study. He _never _held meetings in his own rooms. Besides, at this late hour, the only other person, other than Cromwell, supposed to be here was Harr's nurse.

Each time Elizabeth passed the door, she caught what she could only assume was an argument. Even though she picked up the rolling vowels and gentle consonants of what she assumed to be Italian, the tone was decidedly sharp. She lingered a few moments by the door and made out Cromwell's clear, deep voice, but she couldn't place the other man. He snapped, "_Tomàs! Tomàs!_" Unfortunately, she loitered for too long because the door practically flung open in her face. The man, for his part, was not the least bit shaken by her. He simply straightened his jeweled cap and gave her a hearty "_mi piacere" _before storming down the hall. Elizabeth peeked around the door and made a stab at a joke.

"I don't suppose I can start calling you, _Tomàs._"

"Not if you expect me to answer." Cromwell did not even accord her a smile. He rubbed his temples in slow strokes. She dropped her comedy.

"Thomas, what is going on here? Who was that man?" Elizabeth did not really expect an answer. She glanced around the room. He had tacked up maps of Europe with different colored pins clustered, especially in Germany.

"He was no one," Cromwell said. He buried his head in his hands. "No one you or your brothers would know."

"Why was he here? You never let anyone back here. He cannot be a nobody-"

"Lissie, please leave off this," he sighed. "The recent violence at court has left some creditors with…questions. Just keep his midnight visit between us."

"Here, take Harr. My arms are about to fall off." Elizabeth passed him to Cromwell and took a seat. She took another look at the map. He had affixed the label "Cleves" to one of the pins. Inwardly, she groaned: what are you about now, Cromwell?

Aloud, she said: "What has been going on? The ladies and I watched a fight take place in the courtyards. It lasted until dinner, the men stopped, ate, then started hacking at each other again. Now I hear the Sergeant-at-Arms has been stabbed. Shouldn't someone put a stop to it?"

"Yes, yes someone should put a stop to it," he snapped. He immediately lowered his voice when Harr began to stir. "But I cannot even assemble a meeting of the king's council without it turning into a pissing contest. I try to assure the merchants, the bankers, come to England! It is safe! No more civil wars! They see violence at the political center of this realm and think: England is going belly-up again. Get your bullion out while you can. I cannot make England rich like this. If I cannot make England rich, I cannot keep my place—or my head."

"But-but, I thought the revenue from the religious houses made the king's treasury the richest in Europe."

"It did. But the king hoards it. And so do his nobles. Our traders, merchants, bankers all count on money from abroad."

"I suppose you do too," Elizabeth ventured. Cromwell threw her a particularly hard look.

"What? A man cannot make a profit _and _do good works by his citizenry?" Cromwell gently pressed Harr against his vest. His face softened. "I've been thinking, Lissie—"

"That's one thing you never stop doing."

Cromwell swallowed hard and suddenly became very interested in Harr's booties. Elizabeth thought, Oh God, what does he have planned now?

"With the queen's household being dissolved, and the latest violence at Court," Cromwell continued. "I think it would be better for you and Harry to stay in my house in the City—"

"You're sending me away?" she cried. She had spent every day of the past year in a familiar circle of friends, enemies, and routine. A wave of panic washed over her. She didn't remember how to be anywhere else but here.

"Please, Lissie. Don't be dramatic. And don't startle Harr by shrieking like that."

"You are sending me from court," Elizabeth repeated in a flat voice.

"To keep you and Harry safe," he insisted. "And there will not be much of a Christmas court this year, no masques—if that is what you are afraid of missing."

"I don't want to go. Besides, what would I do? Just loaf around your house? Try to run your house? I don't think your niece would like that very much."

"Does that matter?"

"It matters to me." She knew she couldn't argue with his logic about removing her and Harr, and that it was probably the best thing to do. Yet, the thought of leaving court, leaving behind all that was _Jane_, sat on her chest like a boulder. "How long will I be away?" she asked.

"I cannot say."

"Will I come back to court?"

"Eventually."

To maintain discretion, and the illusion that he was not in retreat, Cromwell waited an entire day to pack Elizabeth's things. For the second time in her life, Elizabeth watched as complete strangers folded up her entire life and neatly packed it into trunks bound for Cromwell's household. As more and more pieces of her were boxed up, she turned away. She held Harr up, so he could see the December snow swirling. Softly, she sang, "Oh, the holly and the ivy, when they are full grown." He gurgled and seemed more interested in shoving his fingers up her nose than in Christmastide.

She watched the snow gather against the window pane and thought of last Christmas, when Robert Aske had been alive, when Jane was alive. The Seymours had walked together, even if she and Jane made Edward's seriousness the butt of their joke. If Jane were here, she would be pasting ivy and evergreen to the windows. Elizabeth wondered by whose will that Jane was gone. Jane had always been the mild, giving sister, who was the slowest to anger, and the quickest to forgive. Elizabeth was the sister who snuck brandy into the other maids. I was selfish, childish sister, she thought. What if my mistake killed the good sister? What if that potion was what killed Jane?

Cromwell's main London house stood in the friary precincts, so she would have to travel through the city instead of by barge. She rolled through the empty, sleepy streets of London in an unmarked coach. Men rode close by, but wore black with no livery. Nothing marked her as anything other than a well-to-do merchant's wife. But, she did not feel like herself, so anonymity suited her just fine.

She stole a glance out of the curtain partition. All she could see was a massive wall. When she poked her head out, it took a few moments for her to distinguish the outlines of the house. She made out a large, central structure that appeared to have been added to. A lot. Cromwell used to complain that his neighbors griped for no reason. Elizabeth wanted to tell him that maybe he should take care not to build his tennis court and orchard on their houses, and the complaints would disperse.

Men called to one another overhead. She craned her neck to see the wall and ramparts stocked with steely faces. They all wore black, a blade, and a wary look. She shivered: this was not meant to be a home, but a place of state, where deals were struck far from the light of Parliament and court. She took a deep breath and murmured to Harr that it was time to explore their new home. No one was there to greet them, but at this hour in this cold, Elizabeth could not blame anyone for not leaving a snug bed.

She followed one of the armed men up the stairs. She hugged Harr a little closer. "What about my chests, my trunks?" she asked.

"Everything needs to be searched before it comes in here," he said without turning around. Then he added: "My lady."

"I am not smuggling arms."

"The master likes everything that comes in here to be inventoried. Make sure nothing…got lost on the way. Sorry, my lady. Rules is rules. The master likes this place to run like a business."

Elizabeth sighed. She supposed she had upended the house's routine and would bear the brunt of everyone's irritation at having the commercial hum interrupted so she could set up house. Not that Cromwell had left the place bare and sterile. In fact, if there was an available inch of wall, it was covered with lush paintings and tapestries. Beautiful objects for the sake of having beautiful objects.

"I assume you would like to get your little man settled in first?"

"I do not sleep until he does."

He pushed open a heavy door. "Good to have little ones in the nursery again." Elizabeth no sooner stepped over the threshold when the door slammed shut.

"Men: always slamming doors and waking the baby," a woman muttered. Elizabeth's eyes took a moment to adjust from the dark hallway to this brightly lit room.

"Kit?"

"I wasn't expecting you this morning. Otherwise I would have been outside to greet you."

Elizabeth highly doubted that. She decided to make peace and ask for terms immediately. "Is that Grace? I have not seen her since her christening. She's going to be beautiful, just like you."

The simple flattery worked. Kit relented and pulled back a little of the bundle in her arms to reveal a pink, gaping mouth. "I sent her nurse away for the morning. Sometimes I like to just hold her and pretend we are the only two people in the world." She closed her eyes on the thought, then her onyx eyes snapped open again. "Harry grew. The only time I saw him was at his christening. My uncle was so proud." She pointed to a crib where Elizabeth could lay Harr.

"I am sorry to put the household out," Elizabeth said. "Do not worry: we will not be here long."

"Long enough that you should probably take off your traveling cloak and stay awhile." She regarded Elizabeth's plain black mourning clothes and uncomfortable expression. "Permit me an observation?"

"Kit, I think you will make it anyway."

"You look as though you could use a moment alone. Just hide from the world for a short while. Harry will be well cared for."

Elizabeth swallowed back a fresh batch of tears. "Hide in the last place anyone would think to look for me."

"Go back down the stairs, to the groundfloor. Make four lefts. You'll see the chapel."

"Wouldn't four lefts make a circle?" Elizabeth asked.

"Not in this house."

Elizabeth swore that she followed the hallway she came down and the same stairs. But the meandering galleries confused her, and the only way she could track herself was by which painting was where. Then the paintings ran together. She stumbled into the counting house. The abacus beads stopped clicking, and two dozen men looked up from the accounting books at the same time. They stood simultaneously and doffed their caps. These were not the fresh young faces that Cromwell kept around him at court. Instead, these men looked like they all had a story they could tell you about why they slept with a dagger under their pillows.

"The chapel?" she squeaked.

"Make another four lefts," said one man. He kept his eyes on the floor.

"Won't four lefts make a circle?"

"Not in this house."

After a few more unintentional detours, Elizabeth pushed open the door to a small chapel. The old, dank smell told her that Cromwell had not been held a private mass in here for years, if he ever had at all. She supposed that if push came to shove, Cromwell could raise the Host in here for appearance's sake—if his life depended on it.

She did not kneel to pray. She just sank into a seat and rested her forearms on the pew in front of her. Jane was good at praying. She could kneel and shut her eyes for hours. Elizabeth could only close her eyes for so long before she could not resist peeking to see who had their eyes closed and who did not. During Mass, Jane would listen attentively to Latin that she did not understand, every so often touching her rosary. Elizabeth's mind usually wandered.

Elizabeth sank back into her seat. She knew that she was the naughty sister, and she was still alive, with a healthy baby in the cradle. So what does that say about divine retribution, Elizabeth thought. She looked up at the cross.

"I think it's a crock, all of it," she said aloud to the crucifix.

"Lissie, have you taken to talking to yourself?"

Elizabeth almost jumped out of her seat at the voice that cracked through the still air. She smoothed her hair out of her face. "God damn it, Thomas! You cannot do that to people."

"We are in a place of worship; curb your tongue." Cromwell turned across the aisle to offer her a wolfish smile, probably pleased at inciting her to blasphemy. "Why? What is it that I do?"

"That-where-well, you _sidle_, Thomas. Makes people nervous." She moved to his side, shaking her head, wondering how long he had been there.

"Good hiding place," he remarked.

"I know." A smile snuck out, in spite of herself. "Church: last place anyone would think to look for either of us." She swallowed back a sob and lurched forward, resting her forehead on the pew in front of them. Cromwell wrapped an arm around her shoulders.

"This isn't about me removing you from court, is it?"

"I did something and it was not my place to do so," Elizabeth whispered.

"Lissie, if you are seeking a lecture to reproach you about overreaching yourself, you had best look elsewhere. I cannot get through a single day without stepping on someone's toes."

"When Jane's labor stretched into the third night, I got desperate. Isabella gave me a tonic that was supposed to trigger labor cramps. Edward was born an hour later."

"Dove," he sighed. "I don't think a few herbs launched your sister into the childbed fever that killed her. And she fell ill well over a week after the prince was born." He pulled her back into his arms. "Now that I have said that, I would not go strutting through Westminster, announcing to the world what you have just told me."

"It must become very tiresome for you to always be the keeper of secrets," she said against his black velvet. "But you always keep your own counsel. You never tell me things, unless they sneak past you."

"If I ever need a confessional, rest assured you will be the first to know." He considered the rest of her statement. "But some secrets: divorces, adultery, babies in the womb that are lost on purpose…those are easier secrets than some I have to bear."

"Thomas, sooner or later we all do terrible things. The sinless are those who lived very short lives. At least with New Years, we can promise ourselves to be a little better in the coming year."

They sat together, head to head in silence. She nestled her cheek against his black curls. In a random thought, she hoped he never stopped using that Castilian soap studded with cloves, or stopped packing his clothes in sandlewood chips instead of the typical cedar. As much as it surprised her to admit so, she hoped Cromwell never stopped being Cromwell.

"I am very sorry about your friend, Master Packington," Elizabeth spoke into the quiet.

"You know, you are the first person to tell me that." He disengaged himself from their embrace. "We should not linger here, lest people get the idea that we have even more to purge from our consciences than we already do." He swept her a grand bow as if he were courting her, as if he had ever courted her. "Shall we go home, my lady?"

When Elizabeth placed her soft hand inside his weathered one, she realized that "home" no longer meant Wolf Hall or Greenwich. Home was wherever Cromwell would be furiously scribbling away at a parliamentary bill, or where she sang Harr to sleep. People, not places were her home now.


	20. Chapter 20

**A/N: The feast of the Epiphany usually fell around the week after New Years. Also, contrary to the implications of the series, Catherine Brandon was a committed Protestant.**

**My Loyal Reviewers: To quell (and perhaps stoke) curiosity, rest assured that someone will die when this story wraps up—and it more or less ends with Season 3. But who? And more importantly, why?**

**Caution: there is some controversial content in this chapter, with implied abortion and sexual abuse. These are meant to be plot devices, not a social commentary. No flames! **

Cromwell knew things had begun to slip around court when he had to ask Francis Bryan to pull up his pants. After another unsuccessful attempt to see the king, he rounded a snow dusted bush to find Sir Francis walking up to courtiers and yanking down the drawstring of his breeches. Cromwell held up a hand to Ralph Sadler walking behind him, which said: "don't ask and wait here."

"Sir Francis?" Cromwell asked as politely as he could. "Is there a problem?"

"You tell me, my lord." Francis strutted up to him. He held out the waist of his breeches and motioned for Cromwell to peer down. "That cannot be good, can it?"

"Open sores are never good," Cromwell said with all the seriousness of an army doctor.

"What is to be done for it?"

Cromwell wanted to say, "abstinence" or "moderation." But then the thought of Anne Stanhope with a wild case of the pox warmed him on this freezing day.

"Oh, Sir Francis," he smiled. "I am sure it will clear on its own. Just go about your business as you did before. But have a care for your breeches and keep them about your waist."

In Jane's old rooms, the ladies lounged and gossiped instead of packing and inventorying the room as he had told them to do. Cromwell surveyed the unordered piles of boxes with a critical eye. Ursula appeared to be the only woman in the room making any use of herself. He beckoned her to him with the crook of his finger.

"Any change?" he asked her.

"If the king does not want to see you, then he does not want to see me." Ursula shrugged. She juggled an armful of sleeves and cambric. "Can we not get some hired help in here? Idle, rich women: good for nothing." She shook her head. "They will brew more trouble."

"I'll see what I can do."

"You and me, my lord, we're the only ones around here pulling our weight," she muttered. "Since you're here, perhaps you could see to young master Fritz." She pointed to the dog growling at her ankles. Henry had given him to Jane when he was just a puppy. Now a year old, Fritz's habit for chewing shoes was less endearing than when he was a wide-eyed, soft-footed pup. Cromwell scooped up Fritz and balanced him against his waist. The dog whined and struggled, while Ursula looked on sympathetically.

"If I were you, I would leave off Sir Francis for a while."

"Ha! Did you see his member? Looked like a piece of molten rock," Ursula barked with laughter. She waved away the image. "Well, give my regards to Lissie if and when you see her."

Cromwell made Fritz a place by the fire in his office. He balled up an old cloak in front of the hearth, but Fritz quickly figured out more attention was to be had if he trotted up and down the room, wriggling under the clerks' feet. Distracting? Yes. Good for morale? It was the best thing to happen to any of them in weeks.

"We are keeping him, aren't we sir?" Ralph prodded.

"Why not?" Cromwell sighed. "He's sweeter to look at than myself or Sir Richard Rich."

Fritz made for good, if undignified company. Although, Cromwell wished he could have presented a more regal scene when Henry Pole, Lord Montague, came calling. Instead, Cromwell had to offer Pole, the last of the regal Plantagenets, wine and refreshments to the tune of a yapping dog.

"Apologies, my lord. I wish I could say it was not usually like this in here." Cromwell settled himself behind his desk.

"Ah, he is no bother." Pole swung the dog into his lap with easy grace. "Master Cromwell, you know I do not like to quit my house in the country. But there are some rumors slinging back and forth that I feel I cannot leave unanswered." He took a deep breath. "I never made any secret that I opposed the appointment of common men such as yourself to the king's side. I never hid the fact that I was against the closing of religious houses. But by God: I am loyal to the king and the lawful continuance of his dynastic line."

"Your brother, Reginald, seems to have other ideas."

"I have disowned him!" Pole glanced about him and lowered his voice. "Just tell me what I have to do to keep my son safe. He is only ten."

"That's a good age," Cromwell said. When Gregory was ten, he thought his father was a hero. By thirteen, Gregory thought his father was an embarrassment. "Stay quiet, that's what I advise," Cromwell continued. "If you must write to your brother, write that he cease his slander against the king. Because you will pay the price, not him."

"Perhaps all could be put to rest if my family were allowed to leave England—"

"Don't run. Whatever you do, don't run. Then everyone will know you are guilty." Dear God, Cromwell thought. I truly hope Pole does not get his boy killed along with him. Pole set Fritz back on the carpet with a gentle pat on the rump. He smiled sadly at Cromwell, who could do little else than grimly nod in acknowledgement. This truly was the day of Epiphany: a son of kings came to excuse himself to the son of a blacksmith. He hoped the king would have his own Epiphany by remembering that he was still king and come out of seclusion.

He heard Richard Rich stalk into his offices with the usual stamping and grumbling. Cromwell's sharp ears picked up that Rich's wife was pregnant again. Poor woman, Cromwell thought. After nine children, she practically sneezed babies out. In order to get to Rich's dining table, Cromwell would have to navigate a sea of eager, small faces and outstretched palms to which he doled sweets. "Tell us a story of your travels, Mr. Cromwell," they chimed. "Do you have a present for us?"

By the time Rich stomped back to Cromwell's desk, he had composed himself. He knew Cromwell hated people complaining about too many children because Cromwell thought there was no such affliction. He also made a point to be especially courteous to Cromwell after the other day's privy council meeting ended in chaos and dissolution. Cromwell, for his part, smiled as if nothing was amiss, and the political heart of England was not lurching towards anarchy. He gestured for Richard to sit.

"There's something new I'd like to discuss with you. As you know the king has seen fit to start remodeling his palaces, including the enlargement at Hampton Court," he began. He kept his voice smooth and lyrical. In the king's absence, this was to be the new Cromwell: mild, eager to please, a man that stoops to conquer.

"I have already released the funds, including those for the construction of St. James's Palace," Rich said, instantly defensive.

"Here's a new one." Cromwell tossed a stack of drawings to Rich.

"This is a fantasy work, it will cost a fortune!" Rich spat. Cromwell got up from behind his desk and paced, maintaining a defiantly cheerful tone.

"Through the dissolution of the monasteries, his Majesty has gained a fortune."

"Yes, but did you ever suppose that it would be squandered on, on fantasies!" Rich threw the drawings aside in disgust.

"Richard…" Cromwell rubbed his head in defeat. "What the king wills the king must have. He's not to be crossed. He's still mourning the death of his beloved wife. And," Cromwell admitted. " He will talk to no one but Will Somers." Only three people at court knew that: Cromwell, Ursula, and now Rich.

"His fool?" Rich said. His thick features scrunched up in disbelief. "He will talk to no one except his fool?"

"It's not the first time. In extremis always." Cromwell tried to downplay the situation.

"For how long?" Rich asked in horror. Cromwell immediately regretted telling Rich. His mild, eager to please Cromwell faded.

"I don't know!" he said sharply. He showed his cards and let Rich see how concerned Cromwell truly was. "But I wish he would come out, for without him, we've all gone to hell."

Apparently, Cromwell was not the only man whose world was sliding into hell that day. Later that evening, as he collected his papers and hoped to catch what was left of the Epiphany feast with his family, he heard a garbled, slurred voice arguing with Ralph Sadler. Cromwell's hand went to the dagger he kept under his vest. For a moment, he feared the violence had spilled into his own offices. God knows the other retainers had a gambling grudge against his clerks ever since he taught his lads how to count cards-which Cromwell did not consider cheating. What, a man has to apologize for being good with numbers?

"You! You vile wretch, this is all your fault!" Charles Brandon stumbled forward, knocking over a carefully calculated counting board. Sheets of paper went flying. He jabbed his finger towards Cromwell, while Ralph tried in vain to hold Brandon back.

"My lord Suffolk. Come to summon me to that dog fight?" Cromwell asked wryly. Ever since the duke had declared before the privy council that Cromwell did not have the authority to summon anyone to anything-even to a dog fight—Cromwell had been asking Brandon if there really was a dog fight because Cromwell loved a bloody, high-stakes gamble.

"You started all of this!" Brandon's strong arm shook off Ralph as if he weren't there. "Now my Catherine cannot even look at me!" His hand made a swipe for Cromwell's vest. He stepped back less out of concern for a strike, but more to avoid Brandon's sour wine breath. "After you started that mischief in the North, sent me to do your devil's work…," Brandon rambled. Oh, so this is about me asking you to grow up, Cromwell thought .

"My Catherine tells me she wishes that the child she carries never was! She does not want our child! She told me that the child would be haunted by the deaths of other children, because every time she looked at him she would think only of the children I put to death." Brandon choked back a sob. "She's losing the baby, she, she won't stop bleeding."

"Perhaps your place is by her side, instead of here, crying into your wine cup," Cromwell said patiently. He tried to pass, but Brandon stopped him with a thick forearm.

"Damn you Cromwell! The one time I try to ask you for help…my Catherine is bleeding and no one can make it stop," he cried.

"I am sure her grace has access to the very best midwives." Cromwell moved against the duke's arm. Actually, he felt sorry for the long-suffering Catherine Brandon. More so, ever since his spies told him that she had turned a blind eye to her husband's constant infidelities, and instead put Reformist books in front of her face. Still, reformer or no, Cromwell was not in the mood to do her husband any favors.

"To no avail!" Brandon steadied himself against the wood paneling. "She never wanted the baby, and I don't think she wants to be saved. Who knows what she has done to herself to spite me? But I cannot live without her. For pity's sake! Surely a low man like yourself knows people…"

Cromwell added up the equation quickly. It seemed Catherine may have taken matters into her own hands, with disastrous results. The duke assumed that a man without a care for his soul, a man like Cromwell, would know unscrupulous doctors and midwives whose consciences and judgment could be suspended for the right price. And the duke hated having to ask Cromwell for help, because now he would know that little Catherine Brandon and her glamorous husband, the golden couple of Greenwich, were on the outs. Opportunity had just stumbled into his office.

"I know a man," Cromwell said, immediately thinking of Ismael and how much silver it would take for the physician to open his mouth to Cromwell about the duchess. "But his discretion costs. He's a Venetian who does not speak English-"

"He's a Venetian?" Ralph asked dubiously. Cromwell arched an eyebrow. Did it matter where Ismael came from? He had lucky features in that they could be from anywhere.

"I can send him over to her grace and he can help her as best he can," Cromwell sighed. He had wanted to spend what little was left of tonight with his family. But, a hunger inside him tugged and begged him to stay with the duke and learn secrets. The kind of secrets that kept Cromwell rich and dukes humbled.

II.

That winter was the coldest that anyone could remember. Gregory remained at Cambridge rather than attempt the roads that were iced solid. Every morning, frozen corpses had to be removed from the streets of London. Cromwell had ordered a perimeter of bonfires to surround each of his London houses, but the piles of icy, stiff bodies still grew. Death hung over London, and no one could muster much of a New Years. Elizabeth kept a quiet Feast of the Epiphany with Kit and her cousin, Richard. After the few guests dwindled into the sharp air, she followed Richard and Kit into a small sitting room. They settled by the fire to watch baby Grace crawl around on the rug. Grace pulled herself towards an orange that Richard rolled on the floor.

"I really thought he would be here," Elizabeth remarked. "He", of course being Cromwell. What surprised her most was that she actually missed Cromwell. Missed his smell, his dry and brittle humor, his nonsensical, new-fangled ideas. She nudged the orange with her toe and sent it towards Kit, who smiled as Grace followed the orange.

"You don't know my uncle very well." Kit shrugged with a resignation that spoke of many years worth of missed Christmastides and Easters.

"He turns his back for even a moment, those vipers at court will be upon him," Richard said fiercely. He stole a look at Elizabeth. "Saving yourself, of course," he relented. "Ah, well. Too bad about Gregory, snowed in at Cambridge."

"They are so different," Elizabeth mused. "I cannot make sense of it. Did either of you ever know Gregory's mother?"

"No, she and the girls were dead by the time Richard and I came to live here." Kit pushed the orange towards Richard. "I never even met my uncle until the summer that they died. Once the Sweat died down, I came here with my mother to extend our condolences. Before that, all I had heard was that we had a rich uncle who lived in the City and did not talk to my mother."

"Thing is," Richard explained. "In Putney, everyone was like us, so we did not even know we were poor. I didn't. Not until my mother brought me here. I had no idea that people lived in houses like this until we came to mourn Gregory's mother and sisters."

"What was he like then?" Elizabeth leaned in, intrigued. Had Cromwell always been Cromwell?

"Very serious, like now," Kit confirmed. "He did not say too much to us. Possibly because Richard and I were tormenting Gregory-"

"He _is _an easy target," Richard defended.

"Why would he not speak to your mothers? Why would he not send your families money?" Elizabeth asked. Richard and Kit shared an uncomfortable look.

"He _did_ send money when he was overseas, and later after he set up as a lawyer and married Gregory's mother. But our fathers spent it gambling and drinking—Putney being Putney- so I suppose Uncle decided it was pearls before swine," Richard said.

"Well, there was something more to it," Kit corrected. She scooped up Grace, who seemed intent on crawling towards the fire.

"Kit, I am sure Lissie does not—"

"Richard! She asked why and I am telling her." Kit silenced his protests with a palm in the face. "Anyway, we were all here to mourn an aunt and two cousins we'd never met. I was supposed to be upstairs with Richard and Gregory. I snuck down for more candies when I heard quarrel between my uncle and my mother. She was asking him for money and he got angry. He shouted, 'How can I? How can I give you money when you will spend it on masses for Walter's soul? How can you pay for masses for him, after he used to put his hands on you and our sister?' I had never heard my mother so angry. She yelled, 'How dare you throw that in my face, Tom! How dare you judge me when you ran away!'" Kit glanced at Elizabeth. "You make of that what you will."

"We never saw our uncle until the year after, when the Sweat returned to take our parents," Richard finished.

"My parents were dead in our house for two whole days, but no one would take the bodies. Finally, my uncle paid enough money that a few men were persuaded to brave their fear of contamination and bury my parents," Kit said. "He just rode up, threw me into the saddle with him, and told me not to look back."

"He came to Putney a few days after my parents died. He asked if I would like to go live with him in his big house." Richard recalled the memory distantly, as if it had happened to someone else. "He said the rules of the house were you had to wash everyday and you had to learn to read and write."

"So that is how we all came to live with my uncle," Kit declared with forced cheerfulness.

Elizabeth looked at her folded hands. She did not know what to say. She wanted to tell Cromwell how terribly sorry she was that he'd had such a rotten life, but she suspected that Cromwell didn't want her pity. Her understanding, yes. Maybe even her forgiveness.

III.

Henry threw off the cloak of mourning as quickly as he had put it on. He awoke next to a dying fire and a snoring fool. As he unfurled himself to standing, he caught sight of himself in a gilt mirror. What on earth have I allowed myself to come to, he wondered. He glanced around his bedchamber. Dirty dishes with molded fruit, half-empty wine jugs, scattered papers, and worst: the sweet-sick smell of urine. He nudged Will the fool with his heel.

"You! Up! I need a bath, a shave, and clean linens. Tell my privy servants to straighten this disorder immediately!"

"Has the prince kissed a princess? Has the enchantment been lifted? Are we leaving this Underworld? I ate no pomegranate seeds, in case anyone asks," Will yawned.

"Be serious for once, fool! And fetch Cromwell. I want to see him straight away."

"At this hour? He will be in bed…what if he is rooting around with his mistress? I could never recover from the sight."

Henry bristled with genuine laughter. Cromwell with a mistress? Cromwell was more machine than man, gears turning and clicking where other people's hearts beat and flesh breathed. Still, he had to have some flesh to him, judging from the stout little baby that Elizabeth had produced. Will returned within minutes, clearly disappointed. No mistress, he told Henry. Cromwell just sleeps on one side of the bed, sheets barely disturbed. Worse, he sleeps in a nightshirt that he keeps buttoned up to his chin.

"Sire, you just can't trust people who sleep like that," Will told him.

Cromwell appeared fifteen minutes later. As usual, he was perfectly shaved, without a hair out of place. Henry watched him from behind the curtain. Cromwell stood straight as an arrow, but his iron features had been replaced with a more quizzical expression. Henry hoped this meant Cromwell was a little unsure of himself. Truth be told, Cromwell's implacability unnerved Henry. How does one rule over a man who is not afraid of anything?

He limped to his chair. He despised Cromwell a little for seeing him stooped over and struggling to his chair. But better to let a base man such as this see the king's weakness than a fellow knight, like Charles Brandon.

"Master Cromwell, how goes the world?" he asked tiredly. He knew about the riots around court, about the in-fighting. He just wondered what spin Cromwell would put on it.

"The king of France has written, congratulating you on the birth of your son," Cromwell replied. Henry noted that Cromwell began on secure ground: diplomacy. He made a little "hmmm" sound.

"Tell Francis that divine providence has mingled my joy with the bitterness of death," he said softly. He straightened a little and returned to matters of state. "Tell Gardiner I wish to see him." Cromwell did not even flinch at the name. Henry wondered, what is wrong with a man who does not have the grace to look discomfited at the name of his sworn enemy? Perhaps—and this worried Henry—Cromwell did not feel anything at all. "How's my son?" he demanded.

"Everything has been done to protect the prince," Cromwell said smoothly

"I love that boy!" Henry surprised himself with the ferocity with which he spoke. "If anything should every happen to him…"

"Your majesty, I wonder…" Cromwell took a few tentative steps forward.

"Wonder?" Henry sneered. "Tell me, what do you _wonder_ Mr. Cromwell?" Cromwell did not wonder or dream, as far as Henry knew. He schemed and maneuvered, remaking the rules of the game as he saw fit.

"I wonder if your majesty could frame your mind to a new marriage," Cromwell said frankly. "After all, however much is done to protect the prince…" He hesitated. An heir and the proverbial spare. It was a vulgar conversation, and they both knew they had to have it.

"Very well." Henry rolled his eyes. "What do you suggest?" he asked offhandedly. He would humor his minister for the moment. Cromwell exhaled, visibly relieved.

"I took the liberty of instructing our ambassadors in France and the Low Countries to begin making inquiries."

"And?" Henry sat forward, interested enough that he could ignore the presumption of Cromwell playing matchmaker. The idea of a French wife tickled his thighs. He had expected Cromwell to push a fat German under his nose.

"They've suggested Margaret, the daughter of the king, and Marie de guise. Our ambassador in France sings the latter's praises, although it seems the she is half promised to the king of Scotland."

It hit Henry that he was having this conversation-with a Putney man of all people-because Jane was gone. Dead. Left him before he could stop loving her, and damn her for that. Would he, could he love again? Did anyone even care, or consider that? Here was Cromwell, speaking of a new marriage as if love did not figure into the bargain. Maybe it did not for Cromwell. Henry was never sure if Cromwell married Jane's sister out of passion so much as he had to have her _legally_, lest he commit a rape. Cromwell the lawyer: everything had to be legal and in writing before he would dip his wick.

"Majesty?" Cromwell asked into the silence that grew between them. Henry turned slowly to look at him, as if seeing that overgrown raven for the first time. How was it that such a low-born man had taken it into his power to arrange consorts for kings? Cromwell had benefited suspiciously well with the last two marriages. With each wife, Cromwell sidled a little closer to the king, until Henry opened his eyes this morning to wonder how Cromwell had gotten so close to him at all.

"There was much malevolence and violence in my absence, was there not? A question of protocol and authority, yes?" Henry said coolly.

"There was some…disorder," Cromwell equivocated.

"I am making the Duke of Suffolk president of the Council. If I have any future absences, you all answer to him." He gave Cromwell a knowing look. "We must be more diligent about the Pole family; they are under suspicion, and we presume them guilty. I am appointing Edward Seymour to head the investigation and will shortly dispatch Francis Bryan to arrest them." He caught Cromwell's eye again, waiting for his minister to betray some sort of disappointment. Cromwell's polite urbanity did not falter for a second.

"Of course, your Majesty."

Henry sighed. He could see that not much, short of a decapitation, would ruffle Cromwell. He dismissed Cromwell with the wave of a hand.

"Oh, and Tom," he called over his shoulder. "For what it is worth, I did ask to see you first, above all others. Now summon Lady Misseldon for me. Tell her I request the pleasure of her company."

IV.

Elizabeth perched in the window seat on the lookout for a wagon loaded with the latest cloth imports coming across the Channel. Tuesdays were cloth days. Thursdays brought in precious stones. She had to figure out new ways to amuse herself for the other five days of the week. On the days when either Harr or little Grace were too sleepy to play, or when Kit went to visit other City wives (who always seemed to forget to invite Elizabeth), she would take her sketch pad and drafting chalks out to the courtyard. She'd convinced a few of the milkmaids to put down their pails and sit for an abbreviated portrait.

A grand coach came rattling up the cobblestones. Elizabeth had not seen Lady Latymer's badge of arms in at least five years. She and her husband had been swept up in the Northern madness, though as hostages, not as parties. Nonetheless, a suspicious cloud followed Lord and Lady Latymer, and Elizabeth was more than a little surprised to see Catherine Parr show her face in London—much less at Thomas Cromwell's home. Elizabeth fumbled to put her shoes on and raced down the stairs to greet her guest.

"Cate!" she called out. "Cate, if I had known you were in London, I would have invited myself over."

Catherine Parr was a striking woman. Although she was several years older than Elizabeth, she had the enviable knack of becoming lovelier as the years passed. Her refined features lit up when she saw Elizabeth hurtling towards her.

"Little Lissie! The Yorkshire child-bride all grown up! Come here, let me have a look at you." Catherine took Elizabeth's waist in her hands and turned her round and round. She admired the texture of the green velvet and the way it fell around the hips in neat pleats. "You must tell me the name of your dressmaker."

"It's my own design. Cate, do come inside before our noses fall off from the cold." Elizabeth led her to the nearest sitting room. "Could you do with a glass of warm brandy?"

"Why not?" she laughed. She shook the snow off her skirts while Elizabeth pushed two chairs closer to the fireplace. "I came to see your husband, but I would rather sit and gossip with you."

"He's not here, but I am glad you wasted the trip." Elizabeth handed a glass to Catherine. "I find I don't receive many visitors here. If it's Cromwell you are looking for, he's usually in his offices at Whitehall or Westminster. And even then, he's not reliably there. But I haven't seen him in weeks, so I wouldn't even know." She raised her glass in a toast. "It's good to see you again, Cate. How is Lord Latymer?"

"His health has not been the same since…" Catherine's smile fell. "I suppose the Northern rebellion took much from many," she said judicially. "I know Robert Aske was a friend to you from childhood." She held Elizabeth's eyes for a heavy moment. Aske was no friend of Catherine Parr, not after the rebels flooded into her and her husband's estate and carried them off with the tide of revolt.

"Yes, God rest his soul."

"There were those of us who…came out on the other side of him." Catherine sipped her brandy, unconcerned by the thoughtful silence that fell around them.

"Well, what brings you to London and Thomas Cromwell's doorstep?" Elizabeth was eager to change the subject.

"I had been hoping he could provide me an audience with the king, to profess my family's loyalty, to repair our name."

"Cate, everyone knows that you were not free to choose for yourself during that time," Elizabeth said gently.

"What woman is ever free to choose? We still have to explain ourselves, though, " Catherine sighed. She looked around the room, admiring the paintings and tapestries. "It must be terribly exciting to live here. All sorts of interesting people, things, ideas coming through."

"I would offer you a tour, but I am still learning my own way around." Elizabeth considered the initial question. "Honestly, it is a little dull. When my boy is asleep, I don't have much to do. I've read all the books I care to read. I just carry around my sketch pad, making designs for gowns that I have no occasion to wear."

"It's been so long since I have been at court, I would not even know what is fashionable these days." She snapped her long, thin fingers. "Oh books! How could I forget? I was just in to see her grace, the Duchess of Suffolk. She is a most voracious reader, devouring books like they are meals."

"You don't say? I never knew Lord Suffolk to even pick up a book." She turned serious. "How is her Grace after her misfortune?" Elizabeth asked tactfully. She and Catherine shared a meaningful look that said, We both know there is more to this story. Women's secrets kept by and for women.

"So tragic to lose the child when it had already quickened in the womb," Catherine murmured. They held one another's eyes for a moment longer. "Her grace wanted to pass some books onto your sister in law. I don't suppose you could hand them off when you see her next."

"Cate, if I can spare anyone the unnecessary trials of Anne Stanhope's company, I shall be happy to," Elizabeth laughed. "Leave them with me, and I will see to it they get where they need to be."

They left behind the weighty topics of Robert Aske and Catherine Brandon in order to trade tales about their labors as young brides to old, lecherous Yorkshire lords. After they had taken stock of who had married into which family, who had been disinherited, and who was rumored to have taken a lover, Catherine Parr took her leave.

"I am sad to see you go, Cate," Elizabeth told her as she walked her out to the waiting coach. "I have not seen my husband in weeks, and I could use more company in such a big house."

"Chin up, Lissie." Catherine rested a hand on her shoulder. "It is no small task to create a new world out of the ashes of the old one. Be patient with your husband. There are many of us who admire him and wish him well in his work, in spite of those who will stop at nothing to see him fail."

"I wish things did not have to be one way or the other. Surely there can be a compromise, a middle way," Elizabeth said, weary of fights over bread and flesh, wine and water. She offered Catherine a steadying hand as she climbed into the coach.

"Sooner or later, we all have to choose a side. Even you. One cannot be neutral in times like these." Catherine handed over a neatly wrapped parcel to Elizabeth. "Do see that it makes its way to Anne Stanhope, compliments of the duchess."

Elizabeth waved goodbye to Catherine Parr. She tucked the parcel under her arm and marched up to the nursery. She dismissed the nurses with the flip of a few silver coins and told them to find some boys and get into trouble in the City. They giggled and happily obliged.

She tucked Harr into her lap while she untied the string that bound the package. His chubby arms reached out to grab at the fine vellum, and his eyes tracked the brilliantly illuminated pages as Elizabeth thumbed through them. I did not get to be Thomas Cromwell's wife for nothing, she thought as she turned the book up, down and sideways. She shook the hand bound volume waiting for something to slip out. Then something caught her eye. Her pinky nail edged along one of the vellum pages until the fine skin split in two. She gently pried it apart to reveal what appeared to be a single sheet of cheap paper that blasted the sacraments. It was from a badly pirated edition to be sure, but still dangerous. And more importantly, it was in English. As the pads of her fingers brushed the other vellum pages, she figured that each two were pasted together to conceal a single sheet of whatever brave volume this was. She tapped Harr on the navel.

"Well what do you think of that?" she asked him. "Your mother's become a go-between."

V.

Those waiting for Cromwell to throw a sordid tantrum over the Six Articles were disappointed. The Lord Privy Seal fixed his jaw and did his little habit of nestling his chin against the ruby brooch he wore at his neck. As Bishop Gardiner read out the affirmation of Catholic dogma—transubstantiation, private masses, confessions, clerical celibacy—all eyes trained on Cromwell. But, the quiet lawyer just stared off into the distance, appearing as if he were tallying up a list for the market in his head. Cromwell almost had Rich fooled. That is, until after the meeting was dismissed, and Rich returned to the room an hour later to find Cromwell sitting in the same chair staring at the same patch of wall.

"Thomas, maybe you should consider getting something to eat. You're looking a little thin these days. People are beginning to talk." Rich rested his weight on the table.

"I'm not hungry."

"Nonsense, Thomas: you're always hungry for more. Say, Edward Seymour arrested the Pole family. We could catch a barge to the Tower and interview them," he suggested. He liked to watch Cromwell in action, juggling questions the way jesters tossed up balls into the air.

"Why? No one ever tells me anything that I don't know already. I feel sorry for young Master Pole, though." Cromwell's dark, reptilian eyes blinked slowly. He returned to the matter at hand. "Richard: these aren't Six Articles. They are a whip with six strings attached."

Rich stared out the window into a new and dangerous world. "Cranmer will have to send his wife and child back to Germany, or be burned."

"Oh, it's not just _that _Mr. Rich. Private masses, confessions, the body and blood of Christ?" Cromwell's voice tilted dangerously. "These are Catholic measures. He's rolled back reforms. It's the end of our Reformation." It was. Unless some Protestant queen was going to ride in on a white horse and save them.

"But why?" Rich sounded like a pleading child, wanting someone to make sense of the world for him.

"Because in his heart, he has always been a true Catholic," Cromwell declared. Not just to Rich, but to himself. He needed to say this out loud, admit the lie he had been telling himself every day, so he could overlook the bodies he left in his wake. "Except in _this one thing_," Cromwell sneered. " That he would have neither Pope nor Luther, or any other man set above him."

How was that for a confession, Cromwell wanted to say. Instead of feeling relieved, Cromwell felt something worse, something unnatural. It was contempt for his own king. Disgust, disdain. The king had twisted words and consciences. Racked and hacked bodies. And for what? All because Henry Tudor had wanted a theology to justify his lust. And when Wolsey and More faltered, Cromwell was always there like a loyal bitch to lead the rest of the hunting hounds. Of course Cromwell had seen an opportunity for money and power in the chaos, but he also saw a path to remake an unfair world. He had convinced himself that Henry would see the error of the Church and would turn towards Luther. When Cromwell realized that all of it had been so the king could have a novel fuck, he was torn between laughing and weeping.

"Thomas, I know he's your friend," Rich said behind his hand. No place was safe to talk anymore. "But you need to shut John Lambert up, before they use us as kindling for the fire he is sure to be burnt in. Everyone knows you had his previous heresy charges dismissed."

Brilliant. John Lambert. Cromwell knew Lambert from Cambridge. Certainly not as a student—it was an open secret that Cromwell had no formal education. But as a young man, if business took him to Cambridge, he always made a point to hear Lambert preach. They had stayed in touch, mostly by brief letters that Cromwell sent to warn Lambert when Thomas More was about to go on one of his hunting expeditions.

"Want me to silence him for you?" Rich said brutally.

"I won't have that kind of talk, Richard. We need to stick together. Maybe underground, maybe preaching sermons in cellars. But we cannot throw one another to the wolves." He threw his palms flat on the table, feeling angry and reckless. "What will Gardiner do? He can round me up. But what about Francis Bryan, Tom Wyatt? What about bloody Edward Seymour? Is Gardiner going to tie Edward and Anne Stanhope to the same stake? Will Charles Brandon turn in his own wife as one us 'extreme Lutherans.' Does it even matter to the king that half of his council is reformist?" He crossed his arms and buried his chin against his lace collar. "Give me that quarrel. I would die for that fight. Let Gardiner and the king come for me. I will stand in the field, fighting. Let them hear the names and secrets I have stored."

"Get a hold of yourself! You have a family that needs you, Thomas. You cannot afford to be a martyr. Neither can I."

Cromwell had been carting around his children's old toy horse for a week before he finally mustered the gall to go see the little Pole boy. The wooden horse, with wheels for hooves and twine for mane, sat on his desk for days. Sometimes he pushed the squeaky thing back and forth. Each of his children had played with it. Bess's father had given it to Gregory for one Christmas. It made him think of his own father, and how when he was a boy, he never knew that people were supposed to do kind things for each other during Christmastide. Finally, when he became convinced the horse was winking at him, he snatched up it up into his robes and hailed a boat bound for the Tower.

He received a less than gracious thank you from young Master Pole.

"Go away!" he shouted. "My grandmother says you are the messenger of Satan." His small fist hurled a handful of pebbles at Cromwell's face.

"People say you are the next king of England. I think both stories are an exaggeration." He edged into the damp cell. If the axe does not kill this boy, then the cold surely will, Cromwell noted. "I have a surprise for you, Master Pole," he said brightly.

The boy scooted around stubbornly in his chair. But he could not resist eyeing what Cromwell had in his hands. Cautiously, he slid from his chair and approached. Cromwell held out the toy horse in one hand and a palm of candied dates in the other. The boy grabbed the horse and the dates and dashed back to his bed. He eyed Cromwell suspiciously while he chewed.

"Thanks," he mumbled. He pushed each of the wheels on the horse. "May I have more dates please?"

"Of course." Cromwell took another handful from his pocket and placed them on the table.

"Why are you wearing black? Did somebody die?"

"Many people."

"Is that why people say you look so miserable?"

"Probably," Cromwell concurred. He took another step forward. "Master Pole, who comes to see you in your cell?"

"Edward Seymour. I don't like him. He's terribly rude."

"That is the least of his character flaws. He hasn't hurt you, has he?" Cromwell pressed.

"No, he just stands there and tells me I can't see my father." The boy's face lit up. "Can _you _take me to see my father?"

"No, I am not allowed. I am very sorry."

"Oh. People are always telling me that the king allows you to do anything you want."

"Master Pole, do you believe everything people tell you?" The boy shook his head no. "Good, me neither. Listen, if Edward Seymour asks you anything, just say you don't know. Don't talk to him if you can help it. All right?"

"Will you help me, Mr. Cromwell?" he asked with his mouth full of dates. "It's cold in here, and I want to see my father."

The next morning at Westminster, the king held a meeting with his council. He wanted Lord Montague and Lady Salisbury condemned on an Act of Attainder and dead by next Monday. Cromwell spoke up.

"I thought we might consider a different placement for the young boy. Maybe in private housing."

"What, and try to make to weed thrive before we toss it away?" Henry cracked. He looked up and down the table to indicate he expected laughter. "Honestly, Master Cromwell, do you intend to plump up a pig before the slaughter." Everyone else laughed, except Cromwell. Henry narrowed his eyes and Cromwell met his stare with as much audacity as a man could muster. Cromwell's stomach lurched. There it was again. That unnatural, unholy feeling. Where a man despises his king. He prayed for the sensation to go away. The burning dulled into a cramp that took root in his gut and sprouted up his throat.

"Well, how do we propose to do the little fucker in?" Edward asked excitedly.

"Tiny neck: waste of an entire axe stroke," Henry crackled. His high pitched laughter carried down the ancient ramparts of Westminster.

"Oh, come now, Mr. Cromwell." Edward jabbed Cromwell in the ribs. "How best do we send the little bastard off?" When Cromwell didn't respond, Edward's moustache spread into a smile. "Honestly, Cromwell, whose side are you on here?"

Cromwell clasped his hands and stared at his wedding ring. He swallowed against the weight in his throat. "Pray you make it quick, so he feels no fear, no pain."

"My lords, we shall make Reginald Pole eat his heart before this month is out," Henry barked. "Now let us pray for the souls of the usurpers, who are most assuredly bound for Hell."

Two weeks later, Cromwell left his desk for a matter of minutes, only to find the wooden horse perched on top of a note from Edward. He grabbed the horse and chucked the note into the fire place. "These bloody days," he whispered to himself. "These bloody days."


	21. Chapter 21

It was the week where John Lambert could not keep the truth to himself, and Cromwell could not stop lying to his king. Lambert was swept up again, and Cromwell could not get the same heresy charges dismissed twice, not with the Six Articles. So, he bribed Lambert's judges. The young preacher walked out of court and a rather expensive "not guilty," rented a boat, and pelted dock workers with bread, asking them if it was raining Christ.

Cromwell thought there had to be less wasteful ways to make a point.

So, when Gardiner had Lambert committed to the Tower, Cromwell was not the least bit surprised when the king came looking for his minister. He was ready to spin some wool into thread for Henry. But before he could spin a real yarn for Henry, the French had to botch their chances. Exactly as Cromwell had planned.

Henry would have no one else around him but his chief hunting bitch when the French ambassador came calling. Cromwell dug his hands into his thick sleeves and gritted his teeth at the charade: the king was treating this whole marriage business as if he were some lovelorn Tristan searching for his Isolde. Just choose a lady and get a damn baby on her, Cromwell thought as Henry waxed and waned over which French princess to share his bed.

"There are so many candidates for our hand," Henry told the French ambassador.

"Indeed," Castllion agreed. "A warren of honorable ladies."

"Quite." Henry studied his ivory cane. "But the fact is because so many appear attractive; I don't see how I can approach them individually."

Cromwell bit down hard on what was left of that morning's cinnamon stick. Why should Henry bother himself with who was the most attractive lady? Who cares if she is a pig in a crown? That is what the royal mistresses are for.

"So," Henry continued. He jumped up from his throne, eager to demonstrate his fitness. "Perhaps King Francis can assemble seven or eight of them at Calais…then I could go there and make their acquaintances all at the same time."

Cromwell held his cheeks in to keep from smiling. Last night he had suggested to Henry that it would be a prudent idea to tell Francis to haul his womenfolk out and display them, so the king would not buy sight unseen. Castllion took the bait immediately.

"But it is not of French custom to send ladies of such noble and princely families to be passed in…review…as if they were prized horses." Castllion's honeyed accent did little to sweeten the tartness of his reply. Cromwell knew he liked the French for a reason. "Perhaps if your Majesty desires one of these ladies, you could send an envoy to report on their manner and appearance?" the ambassador suggested. "In the _traditional way_."

Henry stalked across the room, circling around Cromwell. He braced himself for a blow, for Henry to hit him upside the head. As if it were Cromwell's fault that a princess thought her pedigree should speak more than her dimples.

"I trust _no one but myself_," Henry shot back. He brushed against Cromwell, but at least the royal ire pointed towards France. Cromwell fixed a scowl on his face and glared at the French ambassador on behalf of Henry. Let Chapuys and the Emperor hear that Cromwell was still very much an Imperial man, not to be taken in by French entreaties to friendship.

"The thing touches me too near," Henry said with strained patience.

"Perhaps your Majesty would like to mount them one after another and then," Castllion whirled his hands in a French gesture. "Pick the one you find best broken in."

By Christ, I love the French, Cromwell thought.

Henry approached slowly, in no hurry to strike. "Monsieur Castllion," he said quietly. "You have ten seconds to get out of my court, or I will beat you like dog that you are."

The French ambassador was so shocked that he forgot to bow and simply turned his back on the king. The ensuing silence hung in the air. A bird chirped. Henry breathed. Cromwell winced inside of his plush robes when the king snapped, "Mr. Cromwell!"

"Majesty!" Cromwell could afford to be sunny. The danger of a French marriage had just walked out of the room, disgusted and insulted. Henry focused his intense gaze on his minister.

"An incorrigible heretic called John Lambert is not imprisoned in the Tower and is likely set to be burned." Henry was in front of his face almost immediately. Cromwell kept his head cocked at a deferential angle, then allowed himself to glance up, as if in surprise at the news.

"Do you know this man?" Henry asked. He leaned in close, playing at intimacy.

"I _knew_ him," Cromwell lied easily. "Many years ago at Cambridge." Another lie fell out.

"Not since?" Henry's eyes never left his.

"Not to my knowledge, Majesty," Cromwell lied again. He wondered if he ought to be concerned about his ability to tell an outright falsehood, and look his prince square in the eye while he did it.

"And whilst you were at Cambridge together, did you share some of his opinions?" Henry pursued. Cromwell paused. He did not want to admit he actually had no formal education, and the Cambridge story was yet another lie that he told to put people more at ease around him. "Tell me, Mr. Cromwell, what do you believe _now_." Henry gave Cromwell another heavy look.

"As the world stands, I believe what you believe." His eyes never left Henry's, never flickered in doubt.

"So you think it right that he be burned?"

"Yes," Cromwell said quickly so he would not think about the lie. "Unless he recants," he added. But then that did not seem like a safe amendment. So he added another decisive, "Yes."

Henry's cruel, full lips curved into a slight smile. He turned to leave. "Oh, I forgot," he said absently. "What were their names again?"

Cromwell froze. Whose names? What all did Henry know? Did he know Cromwell had smuggled Cranmer's wife and son out of England?

"Majesty?"

"The sisters of the Duke of Cleves?"

Cromwell recovered quickly. "Oh. Amelia and Anne."

"Amelia and Anne." Henry tasted the names. He smiled at Cromwell. "Send someone to take a look at them. We'll have a second opinion."

Thus, Cromwell bartered one Lambert for two German princesses. The choice still sat sour in Cromwell's stomach, and he could not eat for the rest of the day. He supposed he owed it to Lambert to help him save himself after Cromwell had just tossed him to the dogs. At the Tower, Cromwell paid for Lambert to be lodged in one of the better cells that was big enough to fit a desk and bed. George Boleyn had spent his last night on earth here. Ever a man of God's love, Lambert greeted Cromwell with nothing but warmth as the jailers opened the door.

"It is good to see you, Thomas," he smiled. Lambert was a good-looking man with sandy brown hair and kind eyes. He appraised Cromwell's fur trimmed robes. "And how well you have done in the world."

"I wish our reunion was in a better place." Cromwell glanced behind him anxiously before saying more.

"Ah, I shall be quit of this place soon enough, to a far better place," Lambert said. He pulled out a stool and invited Cromwell to sit, as if this were a social call.

Cromwell looked over his shoulder again before he sat, just to be sure no one was hovering outside, listening. He rubbed his palms and leaned forward.

"John, you do not have to die. All you have to say to satisfy the king is that after consecration, the wafer and the wine are truly the body and the blood of Christ."

"But you and I know they are not." Lambert said it as if Cromwell had tried to tell him that unicorns were galloping down Fleet Street.

"You don't have to believe it, you just have to say it," Cromwell corrected.

Lambert's mild features hardened. "Oh, Thomas, I see now what it takes for man to make his way in the world. He must make a practice of hypocrisy."

He stood up, offended. "There is no harm in discretion." Cromwell went to the window and thought, I can see my house. His stomach burned with the separation from his family, from the lonely nights that he thought he had left behind.

"Believe me I want to spare you the awful pains that have been prepared for you," he went on.

"Did Christ himself not suffer awful pains?" Lambert retorted.

Not another Thomas More, he inwardly groaned. "We do not need martyrs!" he hissed. " We need living men who will go on about quietly spreading the business of our reformation."

"But they won't believe a word I say. If I alter my opinion on such a fundamental matter-"

"John, I say to you again while you still have a free choice, will you live or die?" Cromwell was reaching the end of his charity. Lambert paced a moment before turning on the black figure before him.

"My dear lord Cromwell, I see all this while we have not been talking about me but about you. Not about my poor conscience but about yours. I see that you are afraid of guilt by association, and would rather I perjured my own soul. Alas, it is the only thing in this world I have left."

Lambert's words hit their intended target. He swallowed a lump of bile. Cromwell had to think of more temporal concerns, like the price of grain or the swelling ranks of the poor in the City.

"I am sorry you choose not to save yourself."

He was not sure if Lambert could see him watching from the walls. A good sized crowd had braved the dangers and showed up to witness Lambert's immolation. Cromwell almost left, supposing that one more well-wisher did not matter. But when Lambert looked up at Cromwell from his stake, with sad, pleading eyes, he knew he had to see the grisly scene through. The fire burned too slow and the sharp Lenten wind blew the smoke away, so Lambert did not even have the benefit of suffocation before the flames reached him.

When the fire crawled up his shins, he screamed out, "All for Christ! All for Christ!" No last minute recantation, no eleventh hour perjury. The wind pushed the flames and smoke away to reveal Edward Seymour with the crowd. Cromwell could not read Edward's features as emotions piled on top of one another: horror, fascination, disgust, excitement.

Lambert started to smoke, and Cromwell could not see him through the stinking haze. But even from his high perch, Cromwell heard the unmistakable pop of gristle and fat clashing with fire. He had not smelled burning flesh in years, not since he was a boy in the French army. So many dead men had littered the field that his captain told him to just burn the bodies and save his strength for wielding the battle axe. He had asked the captain if he might have a sword instead because he was so thin, but the captain said swords cost extra. After the city walls fell and the other young boys of his battalion busily forced themselves on sobbing Italian virgins, Cromwell rifled through the gold plates and jewelry boxes, desperate for enough coins to buy a sword.

He found the king slurping oysters beside the fire. Henry sucked the grey, fishy flesh from the shells. Cromwell's stomach rose up to his heart only to come crashing down to his bowels. His contempt for Henry had quieted from a smoldering fire to a dull ache that Cromwell supposed he could learn to tolerate. But why did the king have to make his wet, eating noises so…intimate?  
"Mr. Lambert has gone to his execution," he informed Henry.

"And to hell!" The king pried another shell open. He fished for a pearl before swallowing it. Cromwell faltered but recovered in a second.

"Lady Mary begs Your Majesty to spare Lady Salisbury, who was like a mother to her."

"She was also mother to that monster, Reginald Pole, who even heaven can't forgive." Another slurp. Cromwell wanted to ask how Henry could presume to know the limits of God's mercy. The Gospels were as silent on the subject as they were about saints, apostles, and popes.

"Duke William says his painter is ill. He cannot furnish images of his sister, Anne."

"Send Master Holbein. I must see her image," Henry instructed.

Cromwell hated Henry all over again. What sort of king cares more about his bride's face than the treaties and alliances she brought? He took his leave of Henry before his tongue slipped. Suppose Henry asked him to dictate a letter? And Cromwell accidentally responded: "You prick."

In the great hall at Greenwich, servers carried out sizzling platters of roasted fowl. The greasy, pungent odor of roasted meat sickened Cromwell. Beads of sweat snaked down his cotton undershirt, and he feared the fever he brought back from Italy was surfacing. He stepped out into the gardens for air, but discovered the smell had attached itself to his hair and clothing. He gagged and retched, but he could not escape the stench. Ralph Sadler ran towards him, holding out his leather overcoat as a canopy. Cromwell had not even realized it had begun to rain.

II.

Stories and gossip from court floated through the air, and if Elizabeth was lucky, the wind would blow her way. Juicy tid-bits trickled down through the valets and chambermaids, only to make their way back up the social stratum to the lawyers and merchants of London. They told their wives, their wives told Kit. Sometimes Kit told Elizabeth. She wondered how her fifth hand version compared with the original, and she wanted to ask Cromwell. But if she saw him twice in one month, she was surprised.

The gossips and tattle-tales had it that Cromwell's place by the king's side was slipping. The king and his minister must have had a lover's quarrel, they laughed. The dour lawyer was assuming control of Henry's marriage bed, and the king was beginning to tire of Cromwell's unsolicited advice. Elizabeth would not have believed it unless he showed up one rainy evening. A small cart carrying his trunks lumbered behind him. Even if it were not for the rain, Cromwell brought his own cool weather. He brushed past her without a glance and only a pat on the head for Harr. Bewildered, she stood in the doorway watching the rain pelt the cobblestones. She felt a sympathetic hand on her shoulder.

"I would not take it to heart if I were you," Gregory said. "He gets like that sometimes. Withdraws into himself, goes melancholy. My mother used to blame it on a fever he picked up in Italy." He held out his arms for Harr, who wiggled and kicked in excitement. Now that Harr could sit up on his own, his favorite thing to do was stack blocks with his brother, Gregory.

"He treated me like a stranger."

"Like I said: do not take it to heart. After he joined Wolsey's service he was as good as a stranger to me for as often we saw him. I think my sisters were probably too young to know the difference."

"And your mother?"

"Cheerful." Gregory shrugged. "Whether or not my father was dispatched to York for weeks at a time. She knew he was about important business. She had wanted him to leave trading and enter politics. Better money in it."

The endless refrain in the Cromwell house: better money. Elizabeth suspected that Cromwell could devise a way to squeeze money out of anything he did. She knew she should just leave him be, not rankle him, not question him. But Elizabeth was not her predecessor. They shared a name and little else. She waited a half hour before speaking to him in what she now considered to be _her _room since Cromwell shared it so rarely. He stood shaving himself before her gilt mirror. She watched her reflection watch him.

"I have replaced you with another man in my bed." She pointed to Harr's crib, which stood at the foot of the bed. On the nights when Harr was inconsolable, she would place him on a pillow next to her and nurse him while she lay on her side. They both slept better that way.

"You have left me for someone short, plump, and flatulent? Better Harr than anyone else." Cromwell caught her stare through the mirror. His smile fell away. She moved closer and saw his neck was so frail she could count the delicate bones leading to his skull.

"Thomas, you seem…frayed. Are you well?"

He mumbled something to the effect that he planned to stay at the house for a while, and he was very tired, so feel free to eat without him. The only other sound in the room was the razor scraping against the sharp angles of his face. He caught her eye in the mirror again. Sighing, he explained himself by creating more questions for her.

"We are in a very different world now, Lissie. It is not safe for us anymore. From now on, we need to be ready."

"Ready for what?"

He glanced over his shoulder to look her full in the face. "Ready to leave," he said, as if it were perfectly obvious. "We need to always have a bag close on hand, with plain clothes and ready money, in case we must run."

"But why?"

"Like I always tell you, if your house is about to burn down, you take what you can carry."

"But flee to where?" She slumped against the wall. "Thomas, the whole of Europe is on fire."

They were supposed to be in the depths of Lent, but Cromwell's dinner table creaked under the weight of black market beef. Richard and Kit pounded on the wood; they had tormented Gregory to such an extent that neither of them could muster enough breath for laughter.

"And then, we signed the love letter in Gregory's name and sent it to the old dowager!" they screeched in unison.

"Very funny. You two are simply hilarious." Gregory rolled his eyes. "She's sixty years old—old enough to be my grandmother. Why would she honestly believe that I would send her such scandalous sentiments? In Latin…no less."

"Yes, Gregory," Kit smiled sweetly. "Why would she believe it was you? I mean we conjugated all the verbs correctly-" she turned to Elizabeth. "The look on Gregory's face when she came to our gates!"

"Because I honestly thought Father was going to make me marry her," Gregory tried to explain. He flicked a chick pea at Kit and it pinged off her bodice. "You are one to talk, Kit. So when is Lard on Legs next paying you a visit?"

"He means Kit's husband," Richard explained in an exaggerated whisper.

"His ship docks next Thursday." Cromwell spoke up. He had been so quiet throughout supper that Elizabeth almost forgot he was there. He pushed around the untouched ox tail on his plate. "And William is not that fat," he added. Richard shook his head and indicated the expanse of a house with his arms. Later, when Cromwell wandered upstairs, his brood clued Elizabeth in on the joke.

"He is a terrible matchmaker," Kit said.

"Oh, the worst," Richard agreed.

"My father is the best at everything, except the human heart," Gregory sighed. "I thank God every day that I remain a bachelor, rather than marry at my father's pleasure."

"You all seem happy enough," Elizabeth began unsteadily. She suspected they were right. Cromwell had not exactly come round strumming a lute to court her.

"My father seems to think that we all square up as neatly as his abacus beads or accounting figures. He does not understand how the equation can look so well on paper—"

"But so bloody fat and disgusting in life," Kit finished. She leaned in towards Elizabeth for a little female sympathy. "When my husband got Grace on me, I thought I would suffocate from his fat rolls smashed against my mouth."

"And Richard cannot stay faithful to his wife." Gregory pointed an accusatory finger.

"Mind you, there's nothing wrong with my Frances," Richard said. "There is just no…."

"Spark?" Elizabeth offered. They all nodded. "Well maybe it is something that can be learned in time, maybe…" She stopped herself. Her face flushed, and she didn't think it was the wine. The Cromwell children were right: a man and a woman could not learn to ache for each other. She tried to walk backwards through time, to the place when she first truly saw Cromwell. What had she thought of him? He had always been on the periphery of her vision, but that was only because he once he arrived at the English court, he settled over it like a cloud. No matter which way a courtier turned, there would be Cromwell. When did his outlines, obscured by thick black velvet and fur, converge into someone tangible? Into vulnerable flesh and blood? When she had been terrified of him, he had seemed more idea than man. The unseen monster in a dream whose footsteps outpaced her own. Yet, he became substantially mortal when he made her climax first with his tongue, and then when he was inside her. Their marriage bed had always been jagged and sharp, never sweet.

"Not that my word counts for much around here," Gregory admitted. "But my father has no business playing matchmaker for our king."

When Elizabeth went to look for Cromwell, he was playing chess against himself. He balanced baby Grace on his knee as he pondered his next move. She watched them for a moment and wondered if he had done the same with his own daughters.

"I have a job for you." His eyes never wavered from the board.

"It's nice to see you too, Thomas. Thank you for stopping by this month."

He blinked slowly but said nothing. Grace wriggled in his arms and cut the silence with a little "blah" sound. When Elizabeth stepped closer, she saw he was shockingly thin without his thick robes on. As his face sank in on itself, it appeared the only structure holding it up were his lush eyes. Hunched over on the stool, he seemed…resigned.

"The Lady Mary has always been fond of you, yes?"

"I like to think so," Elizabeth replied.

"Pay her a visit, feel her out for me."

"Oh, you mean you want me to spy for you." She folded her arms and scowled. "I was wondering when you were going to let me into the family business. I've felt neglected." She waited for him to snap up the bait. His indifference maddened her, but worried her more.

"Which one of you is winning?" she asked after a while.

He knocked a pawn out of the way and didn't answer. "Grace," he said sternly. His long, white fingers pried a rook out of Grace's mouth. He wiped the slobber off the agate piece before replacing it on the square. Elizabeth sat decisively in the stool opposite him and yanked the board towards her.

"Lissie, are you challenging me?"

"Actually, I was attempting a conversation with you."She pulled a pink quartz queen from its square and inspected the finely wrought edges. "How go the negotiations for the king's marriage?" she asked as neutrally as possible. What she meant was, how is your search for my sister's replacement?

"The king dithers and dallies. He does not seem to take it seriously." Cromwell pulled Grace's sticky hands from a knight and instead gave her a bishop to gnaw on.

"Perhaps you press the matter too soon?"

Something flashed through Cromwell's eyes, but Elizabeth couldn't name it. "It is no disrespect to your sister," he said flatly. "This is a matter of state."

"Maybe to you."

"Lissie, when I want your counsel, I will ask for it," he scoffed. "And put that queen back where you found it. I like to record my moves."

"I swear to God, Thomas, sometimes there are things that are so near your nose, you take no notice." She wrung her skirt in her hands. "Does it not give you pause that the king has never married a woman sight unseen? When he came to the throne, any princess was his for the taking, but he wanted his brother's widow. When he didn't get an heir, Wolsey could have married him to a French princess, but the king wanted Anne. And when he tired of Anne, I am sure there were a great many Flemish ladies you would have rather he chosen than my sister."

"A king's marriage is borne from politics, not passion," he said tartly.

"Our king is different." Elizabeth knew she did not have Cromwell's subtle, formidable intellect. But her common sense often led her to the most obvious point that everyone was talking around. She threw up her hands. "Well, I leave you to your game."

Elizabeth took one lingering look at her husband and the map of Europe tacked to the wall behind him. Cromwell had outlined the German Protestant states in red. Their crimson borders formed a jagged wall between France and the Emperor. Cromwell's logic tracked perfectly on paper: sever Europe down the middle, prevent France and the Emperor from uniting, and cut the French out of the trade by accessing the Northern sea routes. That was all very well and good if a marriage was just ink on paper.

III.

According to witnesses, the Lord Privy Seal had gone a little mad. By the end of that day, Rich could not remember what took them down to Putney in the first place, and it scarcely mattered. Like so many days that ended terribly, a series of small details had already gone wrong. The sky dawned open and sunny, but by early afternoon, the rain drove sideways into the dark-clad retinue. They returned to the stinking, muddy riverbanks, only to find that Cromwell's barge had drifted out into the middle of river traffic because his oarsmen were brawling with the Putney boatmen. Several of the oars floated helplessly in the brown water, while the men threw fists—and each other—overboard.

"Putney must bring it out in people." Rich nudged Cromwell's rib cage, expecting a polite laugh for his joke. Cromwell turned his dark head towards Rich. He arched an eyebrow, tightened his lips. Then he turned on his heel and set off at a punishing pace. Rich and the rest of the armed escort struggled to keep up with Cromwell's long strides through the mud. Every so often, Cromwell raised his arm towards the river.

"Thomas, what are you doing?' Rich asked after a while.

"Trying to hail a boat. What else would I be doing, Richard?" Cromwell said shortly.

"But the lot of us would not be able to fit in one of those small dinghies."

Cromwell turned another look on Rich. His face lost its usual alabaster and the skin appeared green-grey next to the white ruffle of his collar.

"Well, every man for himself, I suppose," Cromwell grumbled. He raised his arm again, and a craft slowed, only for the boatman to yell, "Fuck you and that ginger cunt standing next to ya!"

"Aye, that's what your mother told me last night!" Cromwell shouted back.

"Thomas, it's the Putney coming out in you," Richard laughed. Cromwell narrowed his eyes, unamused. Richard offered him a piece of the fried dough that he'd bought to munch along the way. Cromwell just grunted and marched on. Sometimes people waved their caps to him, calling out, "God Bless you, Tom!". Others sneered, "Prodigal son finally remembered where he came from, eh?" But Cromwell's blank expression never altered and his pace never checked.

Eventually, their route took them past a dilapidated inn with an attached stable and forge. The windows and doors were boarded over and cobwebs sparkled like crystals in the rain. The only sign of life so far as Rich could see was a sorry excuse for a pear tree. Cromwell stopped so short that Rich and the other men almost toppled over one another. The black figure went wholly still, and his long fox ears pricked up. The wind and rain slammed into the men. Rich shivered like a wet dog, but Cromwell stood alert and erect. Finally, he pivoted on his heel in a precise about face. Rich supposed they would be going back the way they came, but Cromwell walked right up to one of the guards towards the end of the column. The young boy froze, and gripped his battle axe tighter. Cromwell studied the lad's face for a moment before yanking the axe from his unsure paws. The men stood back a little, confused: didn't Cromwell usually pay other men to take up the axe for him? Then again, Cromwell never asked anyone to do what he himself could not.

Cromwell swung into the tree so hard that Rich though he might fell it in one stroke. Did the tree look at him wrong, Rich wondered. For such a thin man, Lord Cromwell handled the axe as deftly as any French swordsman. Perhaps one of them should have restrained the Lord Privy Seal, but they were too mutely fascinated. When Cromwell aimed, he aimed to hit, and his strikes landed precisely one on top of the other.

Rich only caught pieces of Cromwell's ranting. Something, something, I always hated this tree. Something, Something, Walter: you limp-dick brute. Try and get me now, Walter. Told you I would be back for you, Walter.

Once the tree fell, Cromwell's black figure advanced on the house. He hacked through the boards covering the windows and smashed into what was left of the glass. I hope no one is home, Rich thought. When Cromwell went for the door, Rich supposed he ought to put a stop to the scene.

"Thomas, Thomas…the hour is late. And we have accumulated enough property damage suits for one day."

Cromwell went on swinging and hacking. Even through the howling wind, Rich could hear the crack of blade sinking into wood. Their retinue fell back even further. No one wanted to be volunteered to restrain their master.

"Bastard! Drunk cunt bastard, that's what you are, Walter!" Cromwell yelled at the house. "Come near my sisters again—"

I don't think he's talking about the pear tree, Rich thought.

After several minutes, Cromwell staggered backwards. The axe fell from his hands. Rich ran up to him and spun him around. Cromwell's face had gone sickly grey. Then his black eyes rolled back in his skull. Rich caught him, and they sank into the mud together. A few of their escorts cautiously approached. Rich whipped his head around.

"Well don't just stand there like a useless twat! Get some help man, for God's sake, get help!"

IV.

Elizabeth saved up her social engagement in order to slowly dole it out to herself like a treat. This was the first opportunity she'd had since Jane died to leave Cromwell's London house. But Lady Mary would have to wait until after Easter; Elizabeth did not want to get stuck at a lengthy mass and a dinner of salted herring.

A detachment of Cromwell's grim faced retainers surrounded her as they rode outside the City walls to Mary's residence at Hunsdon. Usually, Cromwell did not like to fly his standard in public and possibly invite an assassination, but Elizabeth imagined that it suited Cromwell's agenda just fine to have the people see his wife and coat of arms headed towards Mary Tudor. Cromwell had sent Elizabeth with a gift for Mary: two pure white mares. They were from Andalusia, and their long grey manes fluttered behind them like proud flags.

She had no idea what sort of reception to expect. Mary's beloved Lady Salisbury had been put to the axe. Elizabeth's husband may have drawn up the death warrant, but it was her brother who presided over the grisly scene. She shivered under her lambskin riding habit. The old woman had tried to crawl away from the axe man, leaving him to chase her around the scaffolding. Edward probably laughed at that.

Sometimes, Edward frightened her.

Mary stood in front of the grand country manor with ambassador Chapuys in attendance. He stood behind Mary, yet a little too close. Cromwell would want to know if Chapuys was still in love with the Lady Mary, and the answer appeared to be yes. Elizabeth smiled broadly as she rode up the graveled road. Mary waved eagerly. Chapuys set his lips into a thin smile and eyed the Andalusian mares. When Mary saw Chapuys's unimpressed glare, her smile disappeared, and she fixed her face until it matched Chapuys. He had the grace to help Elizabeth dismount, if only to sneak in a jibe.

"I see Lord Cromwell sends you to court my gracious lady's favor," he said as he set her on her feet. Something in his tone angered her. And when did Chapuys begin spending more time in Mary's household than at his diplomatic duties at Whitehall?

"My husband is generous with those whom the king loves," Elizabeth said coolly. She had the sudden sense that everything said between them today would be wrapped in layers of meaning. "Lady Mary, please accept these mares and our friendship." She curtsied low, but kept one eye stubbornly up. Mary began to grin, but Chapuys minutely shook his head. Mary hardened again.

"You are most welcome to Hunsdon," Mary said as if they were neighbors meeting for the first time. "I thought you might hear mass with us, Lissie. These days it is more important than ever to keep Christ's holy word."

Elizabeth's stomach grumbled in protest. She had been hoping they would go straightaway to dinner, but no such luck. One of Mary's ladies stepped forward to take Elizabeth's riding habit. As she shrugged out of it, Mary's eyes passed over the azure fabric of her dress and gold edged bodice. She sniffed and her smile tightened.

"I just assumed you would still be in mourning for your beloved sister," Mary said.

Black dress or not, Jane is just as dead. Instead, Elizabeth replied, "I hold my sister's memory close. Where ever I go, she is with me."

"She was a virtuous gentle lady. I cannot think how your husband shall replace her," Chapuys added.

In the small, closed chapel, the incense soured Elizabeth's empty stomach and it gurgled over the priest's murmured Latin. Still, she trained her attention on the Host and her mind wandered less than usual. When the communion wafer melted on to her tongue, she wondered what about a tiny piece of bread was worth dying for? But deep down, maybe she had always thought it was just bread.

Every so often, the back of her neck would bristle with the sensation of being watched intently. Oh, you would like that, wouldn't you Excellency, Elizabeth though. You would like to write back in your dispatches that Cromwell's whore is as much a heretic as he. Just when Elizabeth thought her knees would shatter, the mass concluded. Her heart leaped in relief at the thought of dinner, only to sink when it realized that fish would still be on the menu.

I knew I should not have visited on a Wednesday, Elizabeth inwardly groaned. She pushed around the salted, oily fish so it would not touch the spring vegetables on her plate.

"How is your boy?" Mary asked.

"He is well. Stout and happy. He sits up on his own now. He's been watching his cousin, Grace, walk around, and I think he has a mind to try so himself." Elizabeth could not keep the pride out of her voice. Mary softened a little at that.

"Children are quite miraculous," she said sadly. "When I held Edward and Elizabeth, I sometimes pretended they were my own."

"Perhaps the king and Lord Cromwell will consent to a match for you, sweet Lady," Chapuys purred. "But it seems they are quite invested in the king's matrimonial affairs at the moment." He turned his sharp gaze on Elizabeth, as if it were her fault Lady Mary was still as much a virgin as her namesake. "I understand the French have put forth several candidates."

Elizabeth's hand squeezed her fork. This had to be the most polite interrogation ever. "I am not so sure that a French marriage is still a real possibility," she said levelly.

"And now there is no possibility of a French marriage for the Lady?"

"I had thought you would sound a little more relieved about that, Excellency." Elizabeth sawed through an undercooked turnip. Would this dinner, this day ever end? "Perhaps if Your Excellency spent more time at Whitehall than Hunsdon, you would be better informed." Instead of nursing courtly love for the Lady Mary.

"My petition for mercy for Lady Salisbury was rejected," Mary spoke up. "Why was that? I write to Lord Cromwell—"

"My lady, I fear you overestimate my husband's authority. Those decisions rest within the king's discretion." The conversation swerved into hostile territory, and Elizabeth wanted to guide it back. But how?

"Your husband is all that Wolsey ever was, and more," Chapuys corrected.

"We are all servants to the will of His Majesty," Elizabeth raised her voice. "No more, no less." She suddenly felt tired of defending against the onslaught. She wanted to go home to Harr and a decent meal. She wanted to put up her feet in front of the fire and read Chaucer instead of grinding her knees into the marble floor of a church. She would take good wine and a suckling pig over hungry prayers and fasts on behalf of saint.

"The day has grown late, and I should be leaving, before they close the gates to the City," she said after a while. "If you don't like the mares, send them back and my husband will find another pair for you."

The City gates were closed by the time Elizabeth made it back. But they pushed them open when they saw Cromwell's standard and retainers. As they clattered through the dark streets, Elizabeth rehearsed what she would tell Cromwell: yes, Mary still hates you, but she will keep the horses just the same. No, Chapuys is not her lover, but he wishes he were. Yes, your household has better food. No, Mary did not mention roasting you on a spit.

"Oh my God," she whispered as they entered the courtyard. Something had gone horribly wrong. No one would meet her eyes. Some of Cromwell's men sat defeated on the steps. What if Cromwell's luck had run dry, and he had been arrested, assassinated? Sir Richard's bulk took up the doorway. He made no move to help her from her saddle as she struggled out of it. Has Rich turned? Has he come to arrest me too? Her thoughts raced.

"Just say it," she said hoarsely.

"He's not well."

When Elizabeth offered Richard Rich a cup of warm ale, she did so to be polite. Unfortunately, he took her up on her offer. They eyed one another suspiciously over the rims of their mugs. She had never liked him and imagined the distaste was mutual. The doctors scrambled in and out of the bedroom, flapping their heavy sleeves and shaking their heads. A struggle was clearly taking place behind the door. Rich tried to talk over the sounds of crashing plates and Cromwell yelling nonsense.

"I don't suppose his behavior has been out of the ordinary?" he asked. Elizabeth crinkled her forehead. Thomas Cromwell was _per se _out of the ordinary.

"You might want to rephrase the question, Sir Richard," she said wryly. One of the physicians poked his head around the door, his cap askew.

"Madam, I am sorry, but we cannot hold him still to bleed him. I am afraid we will hit an artery in the struggle."

"There's nothing to be done." She shook her head at the useless physicians. Where was Ismael when she needed him? But he had fled England with Isabella, off to warmer climates.

"I can sit up with him," she said. The man actually looked relieved; the Lord Privy Seal would die on someone else's watch.

"Anything I can do to help?" Rich made the question sound like recitation, a formality. Elizabeth was about to answer, "leave," but she softened.

"Recall Gregory from Cambridge. Just tell him it is urgent."

The doctors filed past her, and one of them whimpered that Cromwell had knocked loose a tooth in their struggle to pin him down. The room was heavy with burning sage and a smoking fire. With the doctors out of the room, Cromwell quieted a little. Shivers racked his sinewy body and his teeth clattered, but he had stopped shouting. Elizabeth approached him carefully as she would a wounded dog. After all, injured creatures are prone to bite a helping hand.

His eyes remained scrunched shut and his jaw tightened. She held the back of her hand against his brow. He seemed to be freezing and burning up at the same time. Should she strip him or bundle him up? Elizabeth said his name and he murmured, "Elizabeth." But there were about as many Elizabeths running around England as there were Thomases, so she did not accord his statement much weight. He whispered, "Anne." Whether he meant his dead daughter or his dead queen, Elizabeth would never know.

His body stilled enough for her to pull his linen undergarments over his head. Elizabeth tossed the sweat soaked cloth into the fire. She kept one eye on him while she hauled another log onto the embers. His limbs jerked wildly as if there were a war going on inside him. But Cromwell did not fight her as she tucked a fur lined quilt around his form. His hand squeezed into fists so tight that his knuckles went white, and the other hand fumbled blindly—perhaps seeking a weapon? Elizabeth tried to spoon a little cold water between his cracked lips, but he just spit it back up. So she soaked a rag and draped it around his neck.

His fevered ranting was like a map of the places he had been and the things he had done. Cromwell cried out in coarse French, telling his captain that he was too small to take up the axe and could he please buy a sword instead? When Cromwell slipped into the short, blunt syllables of German, Elizabeth traveled with him, over the Rhine and the Alps. His voice smoothed over into lyrical Italian as she followed him to the sun baked Tuscan hills and Venetian lagoons. A nosier wife might have fetched a translator, but Elizabeth was content to allow him to keep his secrets.

As his body quieted, she cautiously placed her palm over his heart. His skin burned so hot that it stung her flesh like ice. Still, the strong thud-thud-thud of his heart told her that somewhere in there, Cromwell was definitely alive. Elizabeth crawled onto the bed to lay atop the covers. She pressed her lips to his ears.

"Please come back, Thomas. I need you here. Harr and I won't know how to make our way in this world without you." Cromwell understood the rapidly changing landscape, embraced its fickleness, while other men like Suffolk were paralyzed by the new order of things and clung to tradition. Elizabeth did not understand exchange rates, interest rates, futures contracts, loans, and debts. But Cromwell knew. Cromwell knew how to make something from nothing.

"I need you, Thomas. I need you to come back to us," she whispered against his chest. She wanted to be as brave and dogged as Cromwell. But the fear of facing life without him overcame her and she shoved the quilt into her mouth to quiet her sobs. All those times when she had lived in fear of him, hated him, loved him...it all coalesced into a thick cloud that obscured her memory of what her life was like before he entered it. Wolf Hall, the damp castle in York, her first decrepit husband: souvenirs from another lifetime that happened to a different woman.

By morning, Elizabeth jolted awake; terrified that Cromwell might have died in his sleep. To her relief, his breath came in strong and steady. She reached under the covers to feel his heartbeat, which drummed along. Her hand slid up his chest to his pale cheeks. He shifted a little against her touch.

"For shame, Lissie. Molesting a sleeping man? What on earth have you been reduced to?" he mumbled with his eyes still closed. She fell back on her heels in surprise.

"You're-you're back!" She fought the urge to throw her arms around his bony shoulders.

"I went somewhere?" When he opened his eyes, they were more mottled than sharp. With his softened eyes and unkempt curls, he looked almost boyish. He shrugged out of the blankets, annoyed at all the fuss. "How long have I been abed?"

"All of yesterday, most of today."

"How could you let me?" he demanded. He looked more stricken at the thought of missing a day's work than almost dying. Yes, for better or worse, Cromwell was back to his usual senses. "I cannot lounge about like some lady of leisure!" He attempted to sit up, but his strength failed and he collapsed against the pillows.

"A fever laid you out, not me." She tipped a cup of water to his lips. His hands fumbled to hold the cup themselves.

"I do not need a nurse; I don't require mothering," he said crossly. Elizabeth arched an eyebrow. Cromwell had rowed himself back across the River Styx to return to the land of the living. Most men softened after cheating death. And Elizabeth did not doubt that Cromwell had actually bested Death at cards.

"Since you refuse to take care of yourself, the task falls to me until you see fit to do so." She refilled his water. "You cried out in your sleep," she said softly.

Cromwell almost choked on the water. His face went rigid with fear. "What did I say?"

"It was in every language but English."

He sank into the pillows and exhaled with relief. "The last time my fever erupted, my girls were still alive. I thought it had left me alone."

"Apparently, Death had some unfinished business to transact with you. I tried to send the doctors in after you, but you fought them off."

That thought pleased him, and a feline smile spread across his face. Elizabeth helped him into a clean robe and pretended as though she were just holding it open for him, instead of threading his arms through the sleeves.

"I can help you shave," she offered. "You can trust me with a blade. Believe me, Thomas. If I had a mind to finish you off, it would have been last night."

"I commend you for your restraint." His face was still ashy, but some color crept back into his eyes. His blue irises showed more vividly than she had ever remembered as he went still and thoughtful. Elizabeth gently lathered his face with his favorite Turkish soap. As she guided the razor over his sharp cheekbones, she chatted nonsense.

"When my brothers' beards came in, I used to sit them down and shave them. I loved pretend that I had a grand barbershop in London. I would stack my mother's shoes and jewelry about us, because I sold other things in my shop. Jane was my shop apprentice and would ask them if she could interest such fine gentlemen in a new pair of shoes or perfume. I had never been to London, never went until I was fifteen or sixteen, so I had no idea how ridiculous I was being."

Cromwell's eyes flickered in amusement, and she supposed he would have smiled but for the blade against his neck. As Elizabeth carefully rounded the edge against the cleft in his chin, he finally spoke.

"Do you think I am bad man?"

What a strange thing to ask. He was so many things at once, how could assign himself as one thing or the other? Volatile, yet mechanically restrained. He swung between tyranny and tenderness. He was ruthless with the nobility, but generous with the poor. He could not stand idealistic dreamers, yet he believed a better world was possible.

"I don't think you're a bad man," she said after a while. "You are quite yourself."

"They accuse me of being a Machiavellian, of being a heretic. How can I be on Satan's mission when I feed the two hundred beggars who gather outside my gates every day? I try to create work for the poor, hold down the price of food. I try to keep people on their farms and land under tillage. And all history will remember me for is a trail of dead queens."

"You sound as though you have hurt feelings. Never took you for a sensitive creature." She sighed. "Your family loves you. That is all that matters." She almost said: I love you. But the sentiment felt too sweet and simple for what she felt for him.

The next month, they left the city and headed for the Sussex coastline, for a small manor near the fishing village of Brighthelmstone. Elizabeth rode in the litter with Cromwell. They both pretended they rode in the coach so that Cromwell could do some work on the way. In truth, he was not strong enough to sit a horse. The steady rocking made Harr fussy, then drowsy. He slumped against his father's vest.

"The king will like her best." Elizabeth thumbed through the sketches that Hans Holbein had sent back from the continent. The Duchess of Milan was without question the most striking portrait. She had a fine dished profile, elegant as an Arabian mare.

"I was afraid you would say that," Cromwell sighed. "You never saw this letter." Cromwell passed her a crumpled note. In neat, feminine writing, the note read:

_Dear Sir,_

_You may wonder why a Duchess would write in her own hand to a low man such as yourself. I beg of you: exert your influence with the king and do not allow my marriage to come to pass. I am only sixteen and I intend to live for a long time. I only have one head to lose. Should you rescue me from this marriage that your king seems so intent on making, I will consider it as though you personally saved my life. Rest assured that if I ever have cause to do the same for you, I will. I consider my life in your hands._

_-Christina Sforza, Her Grace the Duchess of Milan._

V.

The Duke of Suffolk was, as usual, being a little thick. Edward concentrated on his solitary card game, while Brandon's arrogant voice boomed through the hall. Courtiers clustered around the king's presence chamber. No one except Brandon had seen the king in days and no one knew why. Except Edward.

"Well he never looked the picture of health, did he? Black, spindly toad. Now he has run off, hiding along the coastline in East Essex," Charles Brandon laughed. "Our Lord Cromwell is in retreat. He claims to be recovering his health. I think it makes a convenient story. He ran out of London like dog with a tail between its legs. He knows he's been sidelined."

Rumors raged through London that Cromwell had died, run mad, or fallen deathly ill. But Edward did not think for a moment Cromwell was in retreat. Perhaps after the death of John Lambert, Cromwell had decided to anchor in safer harbors. But Edward knew it was temporary. Cromwell was just waiting for a favorable wind to puff up his sails. Cromwell was good at waiting, lying so still a man forgot his danger. His most recent fever may have shook some of the arrogance out of Cromwell, but not his determination.

Edward glanced up from his cards and wished the duke would shut his trap. He worried that Brandon would keep blundering about, backing Cromwell up against the wall. Trap a frightened creature into a corner and watch the fangs and claws emerge. He palmed a letter in his pocket. He'd sent several messages to Cromwell that had gone unanswered. This would be his last attempt.

_To my (unfortunately) brother-in-law,_

_The King is near death. His wound has overtaken his leg. My nephew is a frail infant who may not last the year. Please tell me what I should do._


	22. Chapter 22

**Pandora:**** You are most astute…the duchess's letter will resurface again. As for Cromwell, I am not sure if he was in the middle of a mental/emotional collapse (I would have voted him Character Most Likely to Suffer a Nervous Breakdown), malaria (I read somewhere he was seriously ill with it in the spring of 1539), or a little of both. And Edward is a sadistic pig, but he's far from crazy.**

**KatieR: ****Alas, our Lord Cromwell does not kiss and tell. Only he knows for sure who that "Anne" was. But I'm thinking a flashback might be coming our way…**

**Dork of York: ****I am so glad I am not the only one who thought Chapuys spent a little too much time with Mary on the series. I think it's also worth noting Cromwell's double standard: he thinks everyone else should marry according to socio-economic advantage, but he marries Elizabeth out of dumb lust. **

**I adore Clara, please update soon! **

**IeonPen:**** I agree that Cromwell is not evil. I don't think of him as a one-dimensional villain. I'm kinda doubtful he's the misunderstood, social liberal in Wolf Hall, but he seems much more sensitive and complex than in the series. He spent most of his life in a kill or be killed world, so he is as good as he can be and loves the best he knows how.  
**

Edward was beyond furious. Cromwell had failed to shove off. That overgrown raven had clawed his way back from the brink of death. Again. The scrappy hound would live to fight another day. Again. All of Edward's letters to the coast went unanswered. Yet, dispatches to and from Cromwell rolled into court steady as drum. So Edward knew the minister's wits were not addled from his fever, and he was apparently strong enough to pick up a quill to write everyone else. Except Edward. Now, the king lay dying, and by all accounts Cromwell had decided to take a seaside holiday.

"Darling, you must admit, you have been rather mild." Anne Stanhope rattled the dice in her hands. They clanked together like bones as she cast them across the board. "Mild about Cromwell, I mean," she said sweetly. "You rage against him. 'Oh, that pompous horse's ass, who does he think he is? Oh, that sickly insect has really done it this time,'" Anne gave her best impression of a raging Edward, which he thought made him sound like a child dropped on its head one too many times.

"She has a point, Edward," Tom added. He dug into Edward's wine, while he made himself at home on Edward's cushions, and smiled at Edward's wife.

"Well what was I supposed to do?" He turned from the stained glass of his withdrawing chamber at Hampton. He did not recall inviting Tom to play a game of dice with Anne, yet here they were all the same, giggling and disrupting his quiet. His wife had been on a losing streak for most of the morning. He wondered who paid Anne's gambling debts. Cromwell had the right idea with Elizabeth: he refused to issue her cash in hand and made her creditors see him in person if they wanted their winnings. Edward smiled inwardly. Elizabeth would see the Second Coming before she ever saw the money that Cromwell had promised to pay her for her northern holdings.

"Cromwell has his uses," Anne hummed. "He is arrogant enough to hide in plain sight. Let Gardiner's heat fall on him. Better that all the Lutherans and renegade pastors knock on Cromwell's door and stay away from ours." She clapped a little as the roll of the dice set her ahead of Tom.

"You, Tom," Edward said tersely. "Has Lissie written you back? I recall you both were once a tight band of mischief."

"No," Tom grumbled. His hawk eyes narrowed, and when he frowned, Edward could see that young Master Seymour had returned a little harder from Italy than Edward would have liked. Tom licked his teeth. "All she cares for now is Cromwell's brat. Face it Edward: the Seymours have lost Elizabeth to Cromwell. He is probably sowing the field as we speak, and she will be plump with a baby come Yuletide."

Christ, Edward hated when anyone besides himself was right.

"Oooh! Edward!" Anne clapped her hands in excitement. "I forgot to tell you! It is so delightful; young master Gregory is most definitely in love with his step-mother." Anne brimmed with laughter at that ridiculous connotation: Elizabeth as Gregory's step-mother. "You must watch the way he flushes when Lissie is around. It's as great a show as any. Cromwell must be more stupid than we thought to continually throw his young wife and pretty son together."

Edward's face opened in blank dismay. How long had Anne been tucking away that juicy morsel? To his surprise, blood flooded between his legs. His cock twitched, and he fought the urge to cuff Anne's head while Tom looked on.

"God," Tom swore. "They must have been sitting up together, praying for Cromwell to die, so they could run to the king for a dispensation. And father and son look so alike, either of them could sire Lissie's next pup, no one would ever know!" His dice skipped across the board. He smirked and scooped up his winnings. He leaned just a little too far over the game board—all the better to steal a peek at Anne's tightly laced breasts. Edward's cock moved again, whether from jealousy or the urge to fight, he did not know.

"Well perhaps I shall pay Lord Cromwell a visit on his own turf, and see what sedition I can sew among his ranks," Edward decided.

"Is that the best you've got?" Anne purred. Her brown eyes trained on Edward. Last night, she had pawed at him, whining about their barren marriage. He had slapped her away and she just laughed: Is that the best you've got? Even after he tossed her into the wall, she giggled: Is that the best you've got? After he had thrown her down on his desk and ripped into her tight unwilling ass (let Francis Bryan sail her other polluted channel), she scrubbed her tears away and sneered, "If that is your best, than you ought to do better."

To be honest it sounded like something Cromwell would tell him.

Edward tore away from Hampton with the breeze at his back. Once his barge docked in London, he did not waste time surveying the scene at Whitehall. Why? So Charles Brandon could deny him access to the king again. "You _must _see the king?" Brandon had scoffed. "Just as sometimes I _must _see your nephew?" What conversation or business could the duke possibly have to transact with an infant? Would the baby prince belch once for "yes," and fart twice for "no"?

Cromwell had holed himself up in an unimpressive manor overlooking the sea. It was exactly the sort of barren, unremarkable place that Edward imagined discreet priests and bribed fisherman hauled ashore the latest catch of heresy out of Nuremburg. He flung himself from his hunter and tossed the reins to his squires. As he stalked the perimeters of the river stone gate, Edward wondered if Cromwell was even here at all, or if that black badger had long since secured passage to the Continent.

"Sweetheart! Sweetheart! You must stay where I can see you!"

Edward saw her. He blinked, not because it was at all bright, but because he would not have known his sister but for her smooth, deep voice. The wind whipped free loose tendrils of Elizabeth's strawberry blonde hair, which she wore in a messy braid. Little Lissie, who used to try on at least two gowns in the morning, wore a plain grey dress as her bare feet kicked up sand behind her. She trotted after a small, Cromwellian looking thing in a cotton smock.

"Oh my God, Edward," she blurted. "What are you doing here?" As she skid to a halt, sand cascaded over Edward's patent boots. The child with her stumbled towards Edward, but Elizabeth caught the hem of the smock with surprising deftness. Edward supposed he should attempt to endear himself, especially if the little imp in front of him was Cromwell's brat. He sank to one knee and threw his hands open. Plastering a grin across his face, he exclaimed:

"Say hello to your Uncle Edward!"

The toddler sank back against Elizabeth's leg and pulled her skirt across its body. Elizabeth rolled her eyes. She seemed different to Edward. Still petulant, still rolling her eyes (would Cromwell ever slap that habit from her?). But his little sister stood taller and narrower. Far from giving up into fat, motherhood had refined Elizabeth's frame so that the youthful chubbiness melted from her, revealing high, prominent cheek bones and deep-set, wary eyes. Edward realized his sister was a beautiful woman in her own right; it had not just been the spring of youth and an hourglass figure.

"What are you doing here?" she repeated. Elizabeth took the child's hand firmly in her own. Even Elizabeth's hands had grown up. Veins and cracks clearly showed as she squeezed the little palm.

"Don't overwork yourself with joy, Lissie." Edward struggled upright. "Do I need a pretext to visit my favorite sister?"

"I'm your only sister."

"Well, all the more reason for me to see you. Is Cromwell loaning you out to the local fishermen? Is that why you look such a fright?" Edward pointed to her frayed hem and grimy, brown toes. Actually, she looked lovely, but Edward wanted something nasty to say.

"I took little Grace here to inspect the tide pools." Elizabeth vaulted the miniature form into her arms. "We saw many creatures, didn't we Grace?" The child's black eyes widened. She scanned Edward and said, "Ah. Ah. Da." Elizabeth pulled her tight to her hip.

"Whose is she?" Edward asked.

"Cromwell's niece. She's taking a nap. I said I would take Grace to see the starfish."

"Where is your Harry?"

"With Gregory. Harr plays it favorites with him." Elizabeth's cheeks glowed. Her summer in the sun had left a spattering of freckles across her nose and cheeks.

"And that black badger, where did that gangly thing get off to?" Edward sighed. Usually he had more creative—and unflattering—animals to compare Cromwell with, but his wit failed him at the moment.

"Swimming, well floating is more like it. He likes to paddle out for a bit, then drift around with the seaweed." She folded her toes one on top of the other. "We can wait here, if you like," she said grudgingly. Edward made himself a rocky seat on an ancient, granite slab. He stretched his legs out and relished the discomfort he had thrown his sister into. He had half a mind to use his doublet as a pillow and doze until a young man's voice ricocheted off the stone wall.

"Lissie! Harr made it upright! I steadied him, but he stood himself up." Another dark head and pair of black eyes bobbed up from the shore. Christ's mercy, how many of these Cromwell things are there, Edward fretted. Elizabeth dashed towards the young man.

"Gregory, you did not let Harr near the water did you?" As if remembering herself, Elizabeth reigned short. She planted her feet and smoothed her skirts. "Master Gregory, may I present my brother, the Viscount of Beauchamp."

Cromwell's oldest son was a few years younger than Elizabeth, and as mild as a doe. His deep brown eyes went wide. More pretty than handsome, Gregory was an angelic foil to his father's black, shadowy figure. His hands were white and smooth; they had never picked up a sword except to hack at straw infidels. How in the name of all that was holy and profane did Cromwell produce this seraphim?

"My lord." Gregory inclined slightly from his hips. Edward supposed the lack of deference could be forgiven for the squirreling poppet in Gregory's arms. Harry was a stout baby with a thick mane bristling out of his cap. He looked as though he could eat his fair, frail royal cousin and then carry on about his day. If Henry could see Cromwell's thriving baby son, he would weep for envy. Gregory for his part did his best to act the gracious host.

"What news from London, my lord?"

"The bad sort."

"Are we to be arrested?"

"No."

"Well then, it's not all bad news."

Cromwell took his sweet time before ambling up from the shore to greet his guest. His linen shirt stuck to his damp skin, and the salty mist stiffened and defined his dark curls. Edward thought he should keep his hair longer like this and unbutton his collar every once in a while; the effect made the Lord Privy Seal look almost human.

"What do you want, Edward?" Cromwell asked without any ceremony. He must have noticed Edward counting the ribs of his chest that were exposed by his open collar. Cromwell pulled the drying sheet tighter around him and nodded that Elizabeth and Gregory were to be dismissed.

"The king's entire leg has gone bad. He may lose it—or his life." Edward fell in step beside Cromwell. "His leg has swelled to double the size, and it is black with poison."

"I am surprised his surgeons have not taken the whole limb. When I fought in Italy, once a limb went black, some of us would hold the man down while another heat a sword til red hot and—" Cromwell's arm sliced through the air.

"I came here because I need your help, not because I want to hear your war stories!" Edward exclaimed.

"You know Edward," Cromwell said slowly. "I might have needed your help when the Privy Council did not recognize my authority to call a meeting."

"How dare you be a vindictive cunt at a time like this? The king may die, and what do we have! What do we have? We have a fucking baby who looks like even a breeze may carry away! We have a Catholic princess under the spell of the Emperor's man. And you? You are just splashing around at the shore like—" Edward halted himself. His eyes moved over the forgotten, sandy beach and deep, still waters. This was the southern coast of England. If things went badly in London, Cromwell could have his family on a boat bound for the Low Countries in a matter of hours. Cromwell was not convalescing, he was waiting. Waiting for a breeze, for a sign to push him one way or the other.

"Tell me now if you will stand beside me and my nephew, or at least not against us," Edward said softly. "Tell me I can count on your support, even if you provide it from abroad."

"Edward, surely you know by now that I do not pursue anyone's cause but my own," Cromwell shrugged.

Edward's hand went to his dagger. How dare Cromwell equivocate at a time like this? And worse, remind Edward that he still needed Cromwell? Edward Seymour would be beholden to no one. They walked along in silence for a moment. Elizabeth and Gregory dawdled ahead. They each held one of Grace's hands as her feet carefully picked along the path. Everyone so often, Harry would wriggle around in Gregory's arms and peer over his shoulder at Edward. A cruel thought entered his mind.

"You know, Cromwell," Edward said laughing. "They almost look like they could be a sweet couple taking their babies out for a stroll."

Cromwell said nothing, but his jaw winced. The thought must have entered his mind before. Edward congratulated himself on a well-aimed blow.

Once the sun set, the moon and stars pulled across the sky. They glittered fiercely over the water. They threw up so much light that Elizabeth did not even need a torch as she made her way down to the beach. Cromwell lay on a thick fur, accompanied only by the crackle of a fire and the hush of the tide. His large eyes stared up at the stars. The purplish moonlight paled his skin further and accented his dark brows and hair. He was such a striking man that Elizabeth was not sure why she never noticed it sooner. She curled next to him, resting her head under his chin. His bony frame made for a poor pillow.

"What way home, sailor?" she whispered as they both gazed at the expanse of stars.

"North Star is there." Cromwell pointed to a speck of light that Elizabeth would never have picked out in a million years. "I wish it did not guide us back to London," he sighed. Cromwell held her tighter.

"Then let us chart our own course. You are always saying that if things go badly for us here, we will leave. Thomas, it is not easy for me to think of Harr growing up in a foreign land, speaking a language other than English. But it would be better than constantly watching over our shoulders. We could be private people, a well-off banking family in Basel."

She had nothing else anchoring her to this rocky island. Her parents were dead. Jane was dead. Her brothers were as strangers to her. Elizabeth did not care if she never danced in another court pageant. She wanted more children, lots more. She wanted a full, busy house, where everyone was always teasing one another, speaking their minds, and no one had to worry if Bishop Gardiner or Lord Suffolk had bought off the maids who poured the bath water or changed the bed linens.

Her eyes grew heavy as the sound of the tide, and Cromwell's steady breath lulled her to sleep. She awoke at the first sliver of dawn. Her knees pulled towards her chest as she struggled to stay warm. The fire had died out, and she was alone. Just as well Cromwell did not leave her a note. Elizabeth did not need a few scribbled sentences to tell her that he had gone back to London. She knew he could not stay away in the same way she knew he could never be a private man again. Cromwell had had a taste from the highest founts of power, and there was nothing else he could do but ask for more.

Elizabeth held on to the last whispers of her summer on the sea until Cromwell summoned the family back to London. The air sharpened as another year prepared to put itself to bed. It had been a summer for small miracles: Grace had said her first words and taken her first steps. Elizabeth could only imagine what the year to come would bring for herself and Harr. As they rolled along in the litter Elizabeth pulled her traveling cloak tight across Harr and wished she could keep him this small forever.

"Do you really think he could ever leave it behind?" Elizabeth asked Gregory as they stopped to eat and rest. Richard and Kit dozed on a blanket, while Grace carefully picked up autumn leaves and handed them to Gregory with a very solemn, "here."

"He will never leave court willingly," Gregory said. "As much as he despises the nobility. I think my mother must have known that too. Once my father entered Wolsey's service and saw how quickly he could advance himself, he could not turn away." He peeled an apple with a single deft motion like Cromwell, and dropped the coil into Harr's hands. "A man cannot leave that sort of power in the same way he cannot leave a lover."

"How did they meet? Your parents, I mean."

"He handled some of the exporting for my mother's family. They were in the wool trade. My grandparents were well-off. More so after my father took over the exports."

"Is that why he married into the family?"

"Oh, no." Gregory's large, brown eyes sparkled. "My mother told me how she used to moon around my father, batting her eyelashes. She said she got tired of waiting for him to look up from his accounting books and notice her, so she asked her father to make the marriage for her."

Cromwell would have been pretty as a youth, with a thick head of dark curls and blue eyes to contrast. All quiet seriousness, with a little bit of the foreign in him, he must have made an appealing challenge for a forward young woman. But the Cromwell that Elizabeth knew had broken his cover. He was no longer a shy clerk, but a hungry statesman hunting out in the open and ready to pounce on the biggest prize he could.

Harr held out the discarded apple peel to her. She teased him by sitting on her hands. He whined for a few seconds before his little face screwed up. At first, Elizabeth thought Harr was on the verge of a tantrum, but then he did something completely unexpected. He folded his feet underneath him and pushed himself to standing. He tottered the few feet to Elizabeth and dropped the apple skin in her lap. She blinked in shock. Then she wept and warbled like a lunatic because it was the loveliest thing she had ever seen.

"If only your father could have seen!" Elizabeth cried.

"Yes, if only," Gregory said coolly.

II.

Henry woke up to a new world. His councilors were pale and sober. Apparently, they really thought he was going to die. It ought to be treason to even _contemplate _the king dying, Henry thought. But it was the first time in his life when he realized that life would go on without Henry Tudor. He would be cold and entombed, and the world would spin on without him.

The notion made him so angry he could weep.

Even when he almost drowned in a mud pond, busted his face and leg in the joust, he did not believe Death would visit him. Of course he lived in fear of plague and poison, yet he never honestly thought anything could touch him. But this time was different. As his doctors cut into his body, his mind drifted away to another time where brothers fought against each other under the banners of roses. In his dreams, he had breathed the terror and chaos of civil war. It did not matter that he had exterminated the Poles. In times such as these, anyone with enough daring and money could jump up to power. The Boleyns and Cromwell were proof enough of that. Henry needed an heir with a pedigree and a sword arm to match. Men no longer respected bloodlines, they respected power. They bowed to fear.

One day, Henry would die and Prince Edward would be left alone to hold the throne for the Tudor line. His boy would need ruthless men to guide him through these vicious times, men who cared nothing for their souls and worshipped at the altar of their prince. Men who would not blink once with mercy. Men like Cromwell. Which was why Henry had scrawled out a document in his own hand that named Cromwell as Lord Protector. He dared not show anyone, least of all Cromwell, the paper. Henry knew he relied upon his minister too much, but he did not know how disentangle himself from the dark twines that had steadily grown up around him ever since Wolsey fell. Better to just box Cromwell's ears and make him think he was dancing at the edge of Henry's mercy.

Tonight, the king sat under a golden canopy. His thigh throbbed as he longed to join the dancers. Instead, he contented himself with watching his court. In particular, his gaze settled on Cromwell. Henry wondered if he grabbed a hold of a loose thread, could he unravel his enigmatic minister? Ever in his impermeable black, Cromwell stood out easily in the glittering room of pink silks and ivory taffetas. Supposedly, Cromwell had been near death, and his doctors sent him to the coast for fresh air. When Henry woke up from his own dance macabre, it had been to Charles Brandon telling him that Cromwell was in Essex and could not come straightaway. If the Henry had had the strength, he would have thrown something in rage that Cromwell had left his king.

Henry tracked Cromwell's movements across the room. The Lord Privy Seal was doing a dance of his own. A handshake here, a touch of palms there, knowing smiles and an exchange of money. Henry knew all about Cromwell's…side businesses. Strange, but he had not thought much of the dour clerk Wolsey had presented to him several years ago. And he almost laughed now to think that he had dispatched Cromwell to Rome to get that fucking divorce. Cromwell had probably gone to a few Papal banquets, counted some money, and otherwise waited for Rome to walk right into the trap he had laid. Henry had to admire a man who could plan that far ahead, but it worried him too.

He waved Cromwell to him and marked the path that his dark hound took. Cromwell made an obvious point to sweep close enough to Charles Brandon that the duke was forced to interrupt his seduction of two young maidens. The young women stiffened and dropped into deep curtsies, while Brandon inclined his head ever so slightly. Cromwell marched up the steps to the throne with a little too much ease for Henry.

"Majesty."

"Cromwell," Henry said curtly. He knew he was on different terms with the Lord Privy Seal. The balance had shifted between them, yet Henry could not place the tipping point. Cromwell rifled through the worn folio he always carried with him and pulled out a letter.

"I have just received a letter from the ambassador in Brussels, Sir John Hutton. He has made inquiries on Your Majesty's behalf about the Duchess of Milan-"

Henry almost launched off his throne. His fearful mortality drained away as blood pumped to his cock. "What does he say?" he demanded.

"He writes, 'There is none in these parts for beauty of person and birth to compare with the duchess…'" Cromwell sounded even less enthusiastic than usual. He described the duchess's dimples as if he were talking about the weather, as if a woman's appearance mattered not at all.

"Does he mention any other ladies?" Henry had a weakness for variety.

At the mere prompt, Cromwell lit up, excited almost. "Ah, yes," he said, tantalizing as a storyteller. "He has seen the sister of the Duke of Cleves. He writes—"

Christ, Cromwell really was trying to saddle Henry with a fat German. "I've heard about her," Henry shook his head dismissively. "They say she is of no great praise either of her personage or her beauty."

Cromwell's features pinched. "Forgive me, Majesty," he said slowly as if speaking to a simpleton. "But on the other hand, such a match could have its advantages. This realm has long been at the mercy of the machinations of the French or the Emperor. But Cleves is a member of the Protestant League, which daily grows in power across Europe and could easily rival theirs. Thus could England make its own destiny."

"Even so," Henry said firmly, stubbornly. "I am anxious to see more of the Duchess of Milan. I want to be sure she is as beautiful as everyone claims. Send Master Holbein to do a formal portrait of her by the next tide."

Cromwell's face went blank, then remembered it ought to smile. He bowed to his king and then cut straight across the dance floor, forcing everyone to yield to him. Henry was about to continue scanning the room for his next conquest when truth caught up with him. He choked on his wine. Cromwell's words echoed through his head. _Thus could England make its own destiny_. For the first time, the king realized that Henry Tudor and England were not one and the same to Cromwell. The king's will and body were not the England that Cromwell served.

III.

"You must put a stop to this!" Holbein told Elizabeth as he painted her. She sat in her white leopard stole and pulled her black pearls through her fingers. Elizabeth shivered in her furs, but tried to keep still. Holbein wanted the window open for natural light, even as snow blew in.

"You are allowed to reply," he said. "I am only doing your hands right now."

She let out the breath she was holding. "He thinks the Cleves marriage is the only way forward for England. He won't hear otherwise. "

"Your husband serves the king's pleasure. Hold your hands still. If you keep twisting the pearls it muddles my outline."

"At any rate, you know I am the last person whose counsel he will observe," Elizabeth admitted. "The duchess does not seem enthusiastic about it either." No woman in Europe could blame her. Ever since England gave out that its bachelor king was looking for a new mate, the noble houses on the continent had married their daughters off as fast as decency allowed.

"What was she like?" Elizabeth asked.

Holbein glanced up from his canvas. "Like a queen in the making," he sighed.

"No. The Cleves lady."

"She is about your age. Sweet. Pretty. Would be torn limb from limb in the English court." His hand dropped, and his eyes turned serious. "My lady, you must understand. In Germany, women are not taught to play cards, read Latin, sing in French. I asked her what she liked to do for fun, and the concept completely escaped her. She can read German, sew, and manage a household."

Elizabeth grimly nodded. A kind heart did not count for much in London. Yet, was it not Jane's utter lack of worldliness what drew Henry away from exotic Anne Boleyn?

"You understand now why you must speak to your husband about this?" Holbein persisted. "You and me, we see things through our artists' eyes, things other people miss. We can see the truth of a life before it unfolds. Even if some deride art as a lie," he grumbled.

Elizabeth's fingers tightened around her rope of pearls. Who on earth would call art a lie? It was the only true thing, besides her love for Harr, which she could fix herself to. Holbein must have read her mind.

"Your husband said all art was a lie—"

"Ironic, coming from a lawyer—"

"And if necessary, to lie about the Duke of Cleve's sister. He paid me extra to give Lady Anna von Cleves a glowing countenance."

"Master Holbein!" Elizabeth gasped. "Surely, you did not? If you work a misrepresentation upon the king, the penalties would be severe."

Holbein waved his brush around, sprinkling indigo across the floor. "Of course I did no such thing! I paint what I see, like I always do. I want to make likenesses for posterity. I leave flattery to you courtiers. I painted the lady as I found her. No more. No less."

A sick feeling curled up in Elizabeth's stomach. She sensed Cromwell was very near the edge of his own ambition, and he had grown reckless in the face of the abyss. Was it vain-glory or genuine devotion that kept Cromwell fast to the Lutheran cause? Of course, she knew better than to ask him out right when he returned late that night.

She dreamed she was back in that dark, forgotten chamber where Anne Boleyn's own women signed her death warrant. Sharp edges and suffocating weight crushed against Elizabeth, and she scrambled to right herself. As sleep faded away, her waking body found Cromwell on top of her, and her lips and hands fumbled to meet his. Her eyes were still half-closed as she parted her thighs, wet and ready for him. Afterwards, they lay on their sides, facing each other. She draped an easy leg over his hip to keep him inside her. A woman could forgive a man anything when he held her like that.

"Maybe we will have another baby come fall," Cromwell murmured against her forehead.

"Perhaps. You know, my mother told me that every mother should have a daughter. I never understood her until now." Eventually, Elizabeth would lose Harr to Cromwell's world of business and politics. The places only men could go. She would never have thought it possible, but now she wanted a daughter of her own. To look over her sewing and gently correct the stitches. Put together her dowry chest.

Cromwell peered over the top of her head to where Elizabeth had set up a few painted icons of saints on the mantle. She had no illusion that anyone listened when she bowed her head to the illuminated figures, but they reminded her of Jane and their mother. The martyrs' placid faces soothed her and took her back to never ending summers at Wolf Hall.

"Honestly, Lissie-" Cromwell started.

"What? I like to look at them. It is not as though I pray to them to mend a broken leg." She rolled onto her back. She and Cromwell could never manage more than a brief respite. "By the way, I sat for my portrait today with Holbein. He wanted me in my furs and pearls." She hugged her elbows. "Thomas: did you tell Master Holbein to lie about Anne of Cleves' appearance?"

"I suggested he flatter the sitter," Cromwell demurred.

"I don't understand you. The king wants the Duchess of Milan, so get him the Duchess of Milan."

"It is not that simple. You cannot make it that simple."

"When it comes to the king and his women, it _is _that simple," Elizabeth insisted. She jumped when his fist pounded the mattress.

"You think I do not know that?" he exclaimed. His strong hands planted on her shoulders. He drew her to him, so he could look her square in the eyes. No trace of blue in them tonight, only black.

"Have you any idea how high the stakes are? England is a breath away from chaos. Will the fragile, fair Prince of Wales saves us from an invasion? If we put an Imperial bride on the throne, it would only embolden the Emperor. You think Mary Tudor would defend England against her cousin's invasion? For God's sake, Lissie! You saw her! She would sooner serve Chapuys than her own country. And me? You know she would tie me to the stake if she ever got the chance. What about your friend, Cate Parr? What about Catherine Brandon? Even Anne Stanhope. How long would any of us last if Gardiner, Pole, and Mary Tudor are allowed to deliver England into the arms of the Emperor?"

Elizabeth shook his hands off and rubbed her shoulders. "And the only way out is for you to hitch your wagon to another queen's fortunes?" she asked. "You once told me that we would leave. When the rebels came towards London, you said that we would leave. So why now must we wait like hares in the bush? I tell you this much, Thomas. You have made a false idol out of the State and while you are busy worshiping your golden calf, you blind yourself to the risk you place your family." She began to cry, and she hated feeling so flushed and angry. "Power and money is all you care for. It will never be enough for you! You want more! More! Well, one day the bill will come due, and you won't be the only one to pay it. What of me? Harry? Gregory?"

"Everything I do, I do for this family." Cromwell's voice went quiet and dangerous. "Have you ever been poor? Of no account? Because I have. And I would rather be dead than be poor again." He checked at the sight of her tears and eased her against him. "Dove, you know I will protect you with my life. Please don't cry." He tried to kiss her, but she buried her face against his shallow rib cage.

"I never asked to be married to you, Thomas. I never asked you for anything after Robert Aske died. I defend you to your enemies and allies as best I can. But I am asking you-no, I am telling you. You reach far beyond what can be done with the Cleves marriage. Please. Save yourself before it is too late."

"This _is_ the only way to save our family, save the Reformation," he insisted.

"This girl, this Anne of Cleves. She is no St. George come to slay the dragon." She tossed herself onto her side. "And if you were to ask her yourself, I do not think she is eager to be a martyr for your cause."

Elizabeth received a royal invitation (summons) to accompany the other ladies of the court to view the naval fleet at Portsmouth. As part of the Twelve Days of Christmas, Henry led a procession of ladies to the dockside. The king barely limped, and shimmered in his gold lined velvet. Elizabeth hung back with Ursula. They watched Henry's cruel lips soften at the perfume of so much female attention. He does not just need a brood mare, Elizabeth thought. He needs to be adored and pet on the brow when his leg hurts. Ursula must have thought the same thing.

"I think our king is the only man in Europe who cannot marry a complete stranger," she remarked as she divided cob nuts between her hunter and Elizabeth's mare. "Well, you look well. Private life suits you. Lovely riding habit, by the way."

"It's kid skin. Thank you." Elizabeth leaned against her mare's broad belly. "How is life with your mother in the country?"

"Dull, dull, dull. Flat as Jane Boleyn's singing. But," her pert eyes twinkled. "That is about to change."

"Ursula," she groaned. "We are getting too old to for people to forgive us our youthful indiscretions."

"Such a fuddy-duddy, Lissie! Listen, I have found a man to make an honest woman of me," she beamed.

"Ursula!" she gasped. Her friend narrowed her eyes, and Elizabeth realized she sounded entirely too shocked that a man might overlook Ursula's colorful past. She cleared her throat. "What I mean to say is: how did you meet this gentleman?"

"His Majesty offered my old suitor a gift of one of the defunct abbeys, which I refused on his behalf. Then Lord Cromwell said he would settle one of the abbeys on me in my own right, and help me make a marriage to my satisfaction."

Elizabeth rubbed her temples. "Please tell me you did not take him up on his offer. He did not marry you off to someone fat and old, did he?"

"Heavens, no! He is young, handsome. True he's not a gentleman, but a banker. At least he is rich. And, I think I can learn Italian quickly."

"What?"

"Well, there is a slight problem. Franco does not speak English, and I do not speak Italian. But he will take me with him when he sails to his next post. Think of it! Ursula Misseldon sailing the high seas!"

"So how have you been communicating with him?"

Ursula's sheepish smile told Elizabeth that the couple had been using a rather universal language. She laughed and threw an arm around her friend's waist. For all of Cromwell's ill-conceived matchmaking, Ursula and Franco might just have a chance.

"Write to me," Elizabeth said.

"You know I will." Ursula paused. "You will be all right here by yourself?" She nodded towards the throng of cooing women encircling the king. "When you have to return to court, I mean."

Tears threatened at the corner of her eyes. Harr was getting big, and she would not be able to keep him with her when she entered the next queen's service. Now that Harr could walk and talk (he could manage "mama," "papa," and "no") he needed lots of room and fresh air. Maybe Henry would never make his mind up to a new queen, and Elizabeth could just live out her life in peace behind the high walls of Cromwell's house.

IV.

The king called for a private mass for his councilors to give thanks that the Prince of Wales had seen in his second birthday. Edward looked among the jeweled and feathered caps for his brother, Tom. If I have to participate in this empty nonsense, then so should everyone else, he thought. He scanned the ranks for another reformer. Even Francis Bryan would do. But the reformers were a rare breed in this chapel. Edward was about to fake a violent illness when a breeze prickled the back of his neck, and he caught the faint smell of good leather and sandalwood.

"Jesus, Cromwell," he muttered. "Why must you go on slithering up to people and catch them all unawares?" He took in Cromwell's placid mask. "That was a sorry business with Johnny Lambert, wasn't it?"

"Ah well, we can only save those who wish to be." Cromwell inclined his head and invited Edward to conspire. They were, after all, compatriots of Luther, under siege. Given the circumstances, Edward could suspend his natural dislike of Cromwell.

"I hear there is to be no French marriage, and now little hope for an Imperial one," he whispered. "I don't suppose that is any of your doing?"

Cromwell gave a little shrug, as if to say, Who? Me?

"My lords, some of us are trying to listen to Bishop Gardiner." Charles Brandon shushed them over his shoulder.

"Your Grace, some of us are trying to have a private conversation," Edward hissed back. He turned to Cromwell. "So why are you here? I thought you would be pushing around abacus beads."

"Free bread. Rankle Gardiner. I never turn down the opportunity for either." Cromwell's eyes tracked the raising of the Host. He knelt and crossed himself on cue. Edward wondered if Cromwell had ever been part of an acting troupe during his many travels. At least for the moment, Cromwell was almost likeable. Almost.

Ralph Sadler appeared at Cromwell's elbow. That ginger puppy followed his dark master everywhere. It was clear to Edward that Cromwell was training up Sadler to some great station. Edward held out hope that Cromwell might retire yet, before the axe could take him. Ralph cupped his hand around Cromwell's ear.

"Something serious has happened. We need to call a War Council." He surreptitiously passed Cromwell a tattered dispatch. Cromwell's black eyes scanned the hastily written scrawl. He glanced up and threw the paper on the floor in disgust.

"Oh, for Christ's sake!" he shouted into the quiet chapel. Gardiner startled in the middle of his mass.

"Yes, yes indeed," he said as he watched Cromwell turn his back on the Host and storm out.

Cromwell had little trouble calling a War Council to order in the Great Hall. Not because they recognized the Lord Privy Seal's authority, but because everyone wanted to know what could have caused Cromwell to create such a scene during the mass.

"My lords," Cromwell said gravely. "Since the signing of the Treaty of Toledo between the Emperor and the king of France, there are vital and unavoidable signs of their mutual preparations for war against this realm." He glanced at the king to see if the gravity of the situation was sinking in, to see if Henry realized that he would not be able to take Christina of Milan to wed and to bed. Not when her uncle was set on destroying England.

"We know how much in these matters they have been urged on by the Vicar of Rome," Cromwell continued. He mentally added Cardinal Pole, Chapuys, and Mary Tudor to his list of instigators. "And now, we hear competent reports of fleets gathering at Antwerp and Boulougne, and an army in the Netherlands."

"My lords," Charles Brandon interjected. Cromwell was annoyed at the interruption, but he yielded to Brandon. "We ourselves have not be idle under such provocations. Defense forces have been mustered and beacons set up along the coast for warning. Work has also begun building ancillary forces facing the Channel. In the North, we've strengthened our borders against the Scots—"

Cromwell gave Rich a sideways glance as if to say, how has he been getting the funding for all of this? Cromwell controlled the purse strings in this land.

"And his majesty's fleet of warships has been provisioned," Brandon prattled on. "And foreign vessels have been forbidden to leave these shores without royal permission." At that Brandon fixated on Cromwell, who could not hide his discomfort at that least piece of news. If Brandon closed the ports, trade would collapse and the price of food would fly high as the moon. A trickle of sweated escaped Cromwell's brow. Did Brandon know he had been sending some of his money overseas? Or that he and Elizabeth had spoken about fleeing England?

Henry tapped his ivory cane on the floor like a judge's gavel. "My lords, how can anyone doubt that the Pope, that pestilent idol, that enemy of truth and usurper of all princes—" at that Cromwell looked up at Henry's vicious attack against Rome. Maybe there was hope for a Lutheran marriage after all. Bishop Gardiner shifted uncomfortably the reprove of Rome and its followers.

"My Lords, at such a time, it is good for me to be amongst my people. I will visit all the places where the barricades and defenses of the realm are being built, for the encouragement of my troops and to the terror of my enemies."

Every once in a while, Henry surprised Cromwell by being a king. He followed Henry to his private chambers. The king seated himself and took comfort in the portraits of princesses arrayed before him. He picked up the miniature of Anne of Cleves and studied it closer.

"I don't recall summoning you for an audience, Cromwell," he said. But he did not tell Cromwell to leave. "She is pleasing," Henry remarked after the portrait. "Has our ambassador been able to see her properly?"

"Yes," Cromwell lied easily. Actually, the Duke of Cleves kept his sisters more cloistered than a Turkish harem, but Cromwell was so desperate for the Cleves alliance to save himself and England that he thought this one of the more excusable lies he had told his king.

"Sir John Hutton has written me in great praise of the princess's person," Cromwell smiled. He shook off talk of war and disaster and turned to the subject of love and babies. "He writes, 'that as well for the face as for the whole body she is incomparable and excels the Duchess of Milan as the golden sun excels the silver moon.'" Cromwell invented that last bit and realized he had laid it on too thick when Henry scowled, as if to say, I'm on to you, Tom.

"Your Majesty, if I may." Cromwell moved forward. The king was dubious, and Cromwell knew he was being reckless, but he had run out of plans. The Cleves girl was the only thing separating Cromwell and England from utter ruin.

"The Duchess of Milan is no longer an option," he said bluntly. Henry's mouth fell open. Cromwell was tired of coddling the king. It was time for the Sermon on the Mount. "Nor, since the Emperor and French are now in league against us, are any of the French women." Cromwell could not remember the last time he had spoken so plainly. "Your Majesty is beset by enemies. Marriage to Anne of Cleves would bring with it the military and financial support of the Protestant League. "Cromwell did not add that they needed such support due to Henry's reckless spending. "With such a bride, Your Majesty can look forward to the production of a duke of York, and many other sons."

Henry fell back in his chair and sniffed, as if he might cry like a child who has been denied a treat. Cromwell pushed down another surge of resentment towards his prince. A terrifying thought entered his mind. He wondered if men might do better without a king at all and to govern themselves. Cromwell bowed quickly and left Henry, just in case the king could read minds.

**Okay, okay. I know nothing terribly exciting happened in this chapter, but it is our necessary bridge to the Anne of Cleves debacle. Unlike Michael Hirst, I like to wrap up loose ends and close plot holes. Will Edward continue to support reform? Will Cromwell overcome his "daddy issues"? Will Katherine Howard learn her lesson?**

**Stay tuned loyal readers, because we are closing in on the last two or three chapters of this story. **


	23. Chapter 23

**As always, thanks so much everyone for your reviews! The feedback is a huge help. **

**Dork of York: BIG thank you for all of your historical insight. And an even BIGGER thank you for helping me deconstruct Cromwell. I am always happy to drool over James Frain with you. Where does our love for Cromwell end and our obsession with Frain begin? Fortunately in Michael Hirst's world, we don't have to answer that question. And of course, thank you for your delightful quip, "morally lazy."**

**Nata: I think the reason everyone (except Cromwell) knows this marriage is going to fall flat on its face is because Henry has become that guy who is on his fourth marriage, but he really, really believes that this wife will last—despite all evidence to the contrary. Everyone has that friend who has successive, ill-fated relationships, yet stubbornly believes that "one day, my prince(ss) will come."**

**Boleyn Girl and Iron Pen: I don't think anything—short of divine intervention or a traumatic brain injury -can make Cromwell lighten up ****. Although, Dork of York has written a much kinder, gentler, user-friendly Cromwell. Meet him in "Truth at all Costs," which has a spy story, a love story, and one bitter custody battle all going on at once. It needs to be a miniseries, for real.  
**

**Pandora: You are right. I stand corrected. You never described Edward as crazy. He may be a sociopath, but he is far from insane. In fact, his methodical nature is pathological in itself.**

**Anna: You are right—Cromwell needs to marry Gregory off quickly. Between Edward's scheming, and Cromwell's own jealousy and possessiveness, Lissie and Gregory are a disaster waiting to happen. **

**Phantom Sylvia: All I will reveal is that someone will die in the end…**

No one was more surprised than Elizabeth when Cromwell asked her for her help. He called her into his study one evening and pushed a quill and parchment towards her.

"You might make a list of candidates of ladies for Anne of Cleves's chambers," he said. "You're good at that sort of thing. You do better with…personal sorts of things," Cromwell added and flushed with embarrassment at the admission that he might not understand people as well as he understood governing them.

"Are you sure you want my hands on this?" she hesitated. "I am sure you carry your own patronage accounts in your head."

"The new queen will be a stranger in a strange land. Her own maids will leave with the emissaries. She will need a friend."

"Thomas, you have gone soft headed," Elizabeth smiled as she pulled up a stool next to him. "A little peace in the queen's rooms—for her sake and mine—would be a welcome change." He clenched his jaw. Neither of them had to mention that harmony might be restored to the queen's chambers if the king would stop using them to poach his next conquest.

Elizabeth jotted down every name she could summon from memory. Lascelles. Norris. The Bassett girls. Browne. Howard? Elizabeth wrote the letters and crossed them out immediately. Bad blood still ran between Howard and Seymour. If a Howard woman wanted to throw her fists in the air, Elizabeth could not say she would blame her. Cromwell glanced at her list.

"Perhaps you might consider giving Jane Boleyn a post."

"She's poisonous."

"All the more reason to keep her around where you can see her," he insisted. "And sometimes I feel a little sorry for her," Cromwell sighed. Elizabeth's head jerked up. Feel sorry for Jane Boleyn? That twisted viper? "For all his charm and glamour," he explained. "George Boleyn was a sodomite and a rapist. I think his widow has had a worse go of matrimony than most."

The room fell quiet as Elizabeth pondered what might have happened between the Lord and Lady Rochford. You can never really know what goes on in a marriage, she thought to herself. God only knew what sorts of conclusions people drew about Elizabeth and Cromwell. The few times she ventured to public events, courtiers looked her up and down with tight, sympathetic smiles that said: Oh, you poor lamb.

"You know that the position of chief lady in waiting is yours for the taking. As my wife, it's your right," Cromwell spoke up.

"I thought I might give that to Francis's mother," Elizabeth replied. "She's older, steadier, knows how to run a household. I am surprised my own sister never relieved me of my position as chief lady-in-waiting. I would have done so." She laughed a little at herself: a woman looking back on the silly girl she had been. "I had not the faintest clue what I was doing."

"There are worse vices than a cluttered room." The corners of Cromwell's mouth ticked up into a slight smile that said he did not marry her for her organizational skills.

"So, about the new arrangements," Elizabeth ventured cautiously. "Harr is only two, and he's small enough that—"

"Dove," Cromwell sighed. He finally took his eyes off the page. "You know court is no place for a growing child. It's too crowded. There is too much disease. A small boy needs fresh air and room to run wild."

Elizabeth's bottom lip began to tremble. She tucked it in between her teeth to make it stop. Cromwell reached out and squeezed her knee. "He will be well-cared for in this house. Besides, he has his cousin and Gregory. He wouldn't want to be parted from them."

"And what about me!" Elizabeth snapped. "I am his mother! Suppose he would not want to be parted from me! Suppose I don't want to be parted from him!" The tears threatening at the corner of her eyes dried up as her anger took over. "Gregory is already lost to you," she spat. "Do you want another son growing up, thinking of his father as a stranger?" She wished she could cram the words back in her mouth just as they fell out

Cromwell sucked in a ragged breath and pressed down so hard on the paper that his quill stabbed through. "Well, we shall see what can be done," he said softly.

As autumn wore on, Elizabeth knew her time with Harr was running short. She squeezed his plump body to her as often as she could. She savored every string of nonsense that he babbled as he tried to talk. He could not manage "Gregory." Instead, he parsed it out as "grey-ry." She liked to watch Gregory with Harr. The way his short arms reached for his brother every time Gregory came into the nursery. The way Harr would push books into Gregory's hands and demand, "story." Sometimes, when Cromwell would walk by and see that Harr had fallen asleep in Gregory's arms, his stony face pinched in a subtle agony that Elizabeth did not understand. Ever since his illness, there was a vulnerability to Cromwell that Elizabeth had never noticed before.

Maybe Cromwell _had _gone a little soft—even if he still ruled England with a clenched fist and cocked eye brow. One evening in November, he called Elizabeth into one of his storerooms, and she had to wonder if Thomas Cromwell was making a stab at being an honorable man.

She pulled her shawl tight across her. The room was cold, lit by a single torch, and her breath hung like clouds in the fire light. Cromwell pointed to an open chest. The gold coins inside caught the meager light from the torch. Elizabeth moved closer to get a better look and gasped. She had never seen so much coin in a single place.

"Thomas, is this your way of boasting to me?" she asked. He had a prince's ransom-or rather, a year's worth of bribery- in that chest.

"It's yours," he said simply.

"What?" she stared at him in dumb disbelief. His wide eyes held her gaze for a moment, before his lashes closed over his high cheek bones.

"That is the sum total of your northern holdings. I once promised to pay you their face value." He scratched at his stiff collar. "I suppose I take my time with my promises."

"I-I would not know what to do with such a sum," she said solemnly. She turned back towards him, with one question on her lips. "Why? Why now, Thomas? After all that has passed between us, why?"

"Lissie, I…" His eyes met hers for a heavy, lingering moment. Then he looked away. "Lissie, I wronged you when I married you," Cromwell said softly. "God knows you must have wanted a simpler man, a younger man for yourself…"

Elizabeth scrunched her forehead, trying to imagine life with a simpler, younger husband. She tried to imagine being married to a man like Sir Anthony Knivert and having his children. But all she knew was the life she had.

"I never thought to marry again, I really didn't," Cromwell went on. "I said to myself: Tom, you had your chance at happiness and you poisoned it as soon as touched it. But then you came dancing across my world, and I could not help myself."

She had never asked him when he first noticed her, when he first set his mind on marriage, or why he wanted her so ruthlessly and completely. Had it been sheer lust? Power? A witch's brew of both? When she first met the king's Master Secretary, she had never contemplated that such a serious man would be capable of lust, or any other emotion for that matter.

"I wanted you so badly, I thought it would kill me—those nights I lay awake." Cromwell stared straight ahead at the chest of gold and the broken promises. "I thought I could love you enough for the both of us, and if I spoiled you and doted on you enough, then you would see that I was not a bad man, and might even love me a little in return…"

Her hand reached out for his, but her fingers caught only air. Cromwell had tucked his hands up into his velvet sleeves.

"I never considered you might feel diff-that you might go a little sideways on me," he finished awkwardly. "The more I felt myself losing you to others, the more I tried to keep you for myself, and just lost you all over again." His shoulders hunched. "I know I have hurt you terribly, and I am the sorrier for it. But, Lissie, if there is anything good left in me after the things I have seen and done, the best that is left in me belongs to you."

Elizabeth almost said, "I love you." Elizabeth almost said "thank you." But then she thought that a woman ought not thank a man for what was owing in the first place. Half an arm's length separated her from Cromwell. Given their history, she could not decide if that was close enough or tortuously far.

II.

"Master Cromwell, could you spare me a minute of your time?"

"Why Lord Suffolk, for you I have five." Cromwell did not even glance up from the flurry of petitions that Ralph Sadler thrust before him. Cromwell's hungry eyes roved over every single paper until he was satisfied that it deserved his signature.

Charles Brandon threw himself into one of the chairs opposite Cromwell. He stretched his muddy boots out on the fine Turkish rug. He studied the room for a moment. Perhaps it was his imagination, but had Cromwell's usual chair gotten even plusher and grander? Then again that lanky bat had lost so much weight that he seemed to shrink in his velvet, padded silk, and fur. Brandon slid his boot across the rug and wished he'd stepped in a little horse shit before walking into Cromwell's offices.

"Master Sadler, fetch us some hot wine for such a cold day," he barked.

The boy blushed intensely and moved to get the wine, but Cromwell held up a white hand.

"Master Sadler does not pour wine. He is not one of Your Grace's page boys," Cromwell replied smoothly. He nodded that Ralph could see himself out. "But, I am merely a base lawyer, born low as they come," Cromwell laughed tightly said as he heaved himself up from behind the desk. He walked over to the fireplace with surprising fluidity for someone who had been sitting for several hours straight. As he poured the wine that had been warming on the mantle, he remarked: "I am happy to fill Your Grace's cup any day of the week." He caught Brandon's eyes as he shoved the glowing hot poker into the wine cup.

"They say the sizzle when the poker hits the wine will disarm any poison," Brandon said pointedly. He waited for Cromwell to take a sip before he imbibed. "I have not come on a social call; we have no need for pleasantries or gossip. Something terrible has happened."

Cromwell wore a faintly amused expression that told Brandon he either knew what was coming next, or at least he wanted to know made for "something terrible" in Charles Brandon's charmed life.

"I return to court and find that my usual apartments have been blocked off and my lodging moved to the other side of Whitehall!" Brandon exclaimed.

"Oh, that." Cromwell scratched the fine line of his jaw with his quill. "Your Grace, you failed to make your loan payment. I needed collateral."

"What! As the Duke of Suffolk how should I be expected to handle something as low as money-"

"Maybe if Your Grace would descend from on high to mingle with the base masses, Your Grace would know that while you have paid the principal balance, you have not touched the interest, which given Your Grace's…spotty history of credit worthiness, has gone high as the moon." Cromwell shrugged. "Your apartments also come with that lovely privy garden, so I thought it sufficient collateral—"

"That's what this is about! Isn't it?" Brandon demanded. He tossed his wine to the side, and the pewter cup made a muffled landing on the carpet. He drew himself up to his full impressive height. "You want the rooms and the garden so your wife and your little brat can play at house while you are at court! So your squealing pup can have free run of the place?"

"We have a confluence of interests. I do not understand Your Grace's agitation," Cromwell said. Brandon's heavy figure looming over him did nothing to dislodge Cromwell's smug smile.

"How is that you are able to look into my debts? Who are you to decide—"

"Because I now own your loans," Cromwell retorted. That sent Brandon crashing back to earth—and his chair.

"But, but how?"

"I purchased the loans from the Dutch banks—and believe me they were more than happy to have Your Grace off of their balance sheets."

"How can you 'buy' someone's loan?" Brandon asked astonished.

"Because everything is for sale," Cromwell said bluntly. His pleased smile dissipated into a frown as if he just remembered something unfortunate. He reached into his desk fumbled for a moment before tossing a velvet pouch towards Brandon. Cromwell leaned forward, and his lush robes bunched up around his shoulders like a cobra's hood.

"What kind of man sends his wife to put up her own jewelry as security to pay her husband's gambling and whoring debts?" Cromwell hissed.

"How dare you reprimand me about morals?" Brandon edged closer. He kept his voice in check. Some threats needed to be made with a subtle tilt of the head and a whisper. "My father carried the Tudor banner at the battle of Bosworth-"

"I do not doubt your father's arm grew very tired holding the flag—"

"I am the Duke of Suffolk," Brandon repeated stubbornly. Why did that fact not seem to matter to Cromwell?

"You are duke by his Majesty's creation, not by birth. You are duke because the king had a whim when he was young." Cromwell settled himself back over his work to indicate the conversation was over.

"I will not have the son of brewer condemn me on my morals! God knows the blood in the North should be crusting under your nails instead of mine." Brandon straightened himself and tugged his doublet back into place.

"I did not mean to critique your conduct as a whole," Cromwell said wryly. "I only suggest Your Grace is…morally lazy."

"How dare you! You low-born son of a—"

"Yes, Your Grace," Cromwell agreed. "I am son of a brewer, a blacksmith, an inn keeper—even an Irishman according to some gossip. My mother may have birthed me into a blanket of grime and poverty, but _I _own your loans." He said it as if he meant to say, "I own _you_, Charles Brandon."

"Now if you will excuse me, Your Grace, I am very busy managing the realm. And take your wife's jewelry with you. Tell her she never need come begging in her husband's stead. Charles-"

"How dare you address me so informally!"

"If I see these jewels on your doxies at court instead of your wife," Cromwell continued conversationally. "I am going to take more than just a few rooms and a garden from you." He waved a jeweled hand as if swatting away a fly.

Brandon studied Cromwell for a moment before turning his back. Cromwell seemed so sure of his place in a very uncertain world. He moved in an orbit where money was worth more than titles or land, a world where land was not money. The new order of things terrified Brandon. He sensed his place in the world slipping, while Cromwell made merry of chaos. Brandon would never admit it to anyone—not even to his Catherine—but Cromwell frightened him. It was not just Cromwell's intellect—which was formidable in itself—it was his sheer indestructibility. Like a mangy, scrappy fighting dog, Cromwell had been against the wall more than once, and gnashed his teeth and ripped into jugulars until he lived to fight another day. He thought about Lissie Seymour sharing a bed with a man such as that. Poor lamb, he thought.

Brandon waited until he had an excuse to go see Edward Seymour. The king had recently made the late queen's brother Earl of Hertford. The fact that the king only got around to elevating Edward to earl some two years after the birth of the Prince of Wales struck Brandon as odd.

Which meant he could smell Cromwell's sandalwood cologne all over it.

Cromwell liked to keep people indebted to him. He might give a man a gift, but it was never for free. Edward and Cromwell were bound through marriage, and though they railed against each other, something kept them in a mutual state of tolerance—and that thing was not Lissie Seymour. Brandon wondered if Edward was not something of Lutheran himself. The reformers were nothing but troublemakers in Brandon's mind, complicating what use to be a merry state of affairs.

So, when Brandon finally knocked on Edward Seymour's door, it was only after two attempts of approaching the heavy oak, hand poised in the air and ready to bang a greeting, and Brandon would lose his nerve and walk away. Edward seemed just as tentative as Brandon when the usher announced the Duke of Suffolk. Edward scrambled to thrust aside the book he had been reading. He stood quickly, less out of deference but more out of a readiness to fight.

Brandon held out his hand and approached slowly. When he looked around Edward to catch a glimpse of the book that he seemed so eager to hide, Edward shifted his stance to block Brandon's view.

"Your Grace," Edward said cautiously. He accepted Brandon's handshake but did not take his cold eyes off the duke for a moment. "To what do I owe this honor?"

"I came to congratulate you. I understand the king has made you Earl of Hertford."

Edward did not appear particularly thrilled at his new title. He merely nodded. Brandon wondered if Edward thought anything short of a dukedom shortchanged him, or if Edward Seymour did like to owe anything to anyone.

"And I believe it is time to patch up our past quarrels and differences, my Lord Hertford," Brandon conceded. Edward's blank mask did not budge. Brandon took a deep breath and wondered if he might be making a miscalculation. "There are better quarrels to be had," he finished.

Edward's sleek eyes roved over the duke before his mustache curled into what Brandon supposed was a smile. No need to say Cromwell's name aloud. Cromwell and Edward might conspire and gossip like fishwives, but there was no love lost between them.

"I am happy to agree with Your Grace," Edward chirped. He transformed into the gracious host. He poured two cups of wine and handed one to Brandon. They raised their glasses and toasted. "I am commanded to meet the Cleves princess at Calais," Brandon explained after a few healthy gulps. "A great many things hang upon this marriage, do they not?" he said pointedly.

"Well, the king's happiness for one," Edward replied as if that were the most obvious thing. But his face morphed as the gears in his mind worked through the enormity of the duke had to say. "And my Lord Cromwell's reputation."

"What a pity if all shall go awry…for some reason," Brandon smiled.

"I would have pity for the king," Edward insisted.

"But on the other hand…?" Brandon pressed. He raised his glass. "_Salut_."

"_Salut," _Edward repeated with less enthusiasm than Brandon would have liked.

III.

Elizabeth's return to court turned out to be just as painful as her departure. In the weak light of a December morning, she stood silent with Kit and Richard as her trunks were loaded onto the coach.

"You might visit me, Kit," Elizabeth said. She bit her cheeks to keep her voice from wavering.

"I have no desire to go to that gossip-mongering bear pit," Kit rejoined. "_You _of course are more than welcome to call upon me and bring your little man with you."

"Where is your little black lamb?" Richard asked.

"Inside with Gregory, where it's warm. But I think Harr's nurses have swaddled him in so many layers that I will still be unwrapping him come Easter."

The three stood silent in the hushed, snowy dawn until Cromwell brushed past them, in a hurry as always.

"Chin up, all you," he called over his shoulder. "Lissie, we are going to Whitehall, not a funeral."

Gregory came out last, clutching Harr. He moved his small, curious face in spite of the furs, so he could to take in all of the action. "Grey-ry!" he cried. "Let's go." Harr tried to clap his hands, eager to set off on what appeared to be an adventure.

Gregory shook his head sadly. "No, Harr. I'm not going. Just your mother and father." He kissed the tip of Harr's nose, already red with cold. "You are going to live in an enchanted palace. And if you are very good, and very quiet, you will find elves and fairies in the gardens." Just as he tried to hand Harr off to his father, Harr launched into a screaming fit. He struggled in Cromwell's arms and pushed his little, booty-clad feet against Cromwell's chest.

"No! No! I want Grey-ry!" Harr sobbed. He tried to wrench himself around in his father's firm grasp, his stubby fingers desperately reaching Gregory.

"Right. This is where I go," Richard said quickly. "I hate good-byes." He kissed Elizabeth's cheeks in quick succession. "Hopefully, I will see you when I joust next."

"I'll give you my favors to wear," Elizabeth promised.

"Well, do not be a stranger around here," Kit said sourly. She turned away hurriedly, only to whirl around and fling her arms around Elizabeth. "Please watch over my uncle," she whispered. "I worry so much for him. Promise me you will watch over him."

"I will. I promise." But Elizabeth feared her words were drowned out by Harr screaming for his brother.

"I want Grey-ry!" Harr wailed. He squirmed violently against Cromwell, as if his father were a stranger.

"Lissie, let us be on our way, before Harr wakes up the entire city," Cromwell said tiredly. He wore pale mask of patient suffering as Harr struggled against his father's embrace. Elizabeth turned to say farewell to Gregory, but he had already turned his back. She thought about calling out to him, but decided against it.

Once in the coach, Harr muffled his sobs against Cromwell's fur lined robes. Exhausted, he eventually slumped against his father in defeat. Harr sighed and shoved his thumb in his mouth. When Cromwell's grip relaxed, Harr wormed his way out and crawled into Elizabeth's lap.

"He's just not as used to you as he is to Gregory," Elizabeth apologized on Harr's behalf. Cromwell's forehead pinched with unvoiced pain, and he said nothing.

"I did not say a proper good-bye to Gregory," she said after a while. "I hope he does not feel slighted."

Cromwell held her gaze for a tense moment. "I think it's time Gregory was married and had his own family, don't you?"

Elizabeth had been away from court for so long that when she walked into her old apartments, it was as if entering them for the very first time. Once she made sure Harr was settled in with his nurses, Elizabeth meandered from room to room. It was a little like reacquainting herself with a long lost friend; every memory brought up an entirely different remembrance. Her finger tips brushed the painted and textured walls. Cromwell had given the Seymours his apartments so that the king might seduce Jane with some privacy. Stupidly, she and Jane had not realized how temporary the situation would be because they both agreed the rooms would look much nicer with pink walls. Cromwell had been understandably diverted by killing off one queen and replacing her with another, so when he finally returned to his now pink apartments, he calmly sent Sir John Seymour the inventory of costs to have the place repainted.

Elizabeth smiled. She would have given her black pearl necklace to see Cromwell's face when he realized that the Seymour girls had painted the Master Secretary's apartments a cheerful shade of _pink_. Elizabeth shook her head at her and Jane's foolishness as she toured each room individually. She thought about the afternoon when the king gave Jane a purse of gold. Elizabeth closed her eyes and saw the alcove where she and Jane tucked themselves, feverishly planning how many dresses, how many yards of lace they would buy when Cromwell's shadow fell across them. He had smiled and told them to return the money. He had said, "Trust me."

Elizabeth poked her head into the nursery, still a buttery yellow offset by a mural of forest creatures. Cromwell had picked that color while she had been watching Robert Aske gurgle and choke to death. Now, Harr scuttled around, gently pressing his fingers to the lily pads she painted when she and Cromwell could barely look at each other, let alone have a conversation.

She strolled down to her husband's study. Cromwell only worked in his study late at night, so it was empty. And unlocked. She let herself in and helped herself to Cromwell's chair. She had once thought her life would end in this room. When Cromwell had found her letter to Robert Aske, she thought for sure he would kill her in a jealous fury. She shivered at the memory and pushed it deep into the pit of her stomach. But they had made love in this room, too. Their bodies had joined even when the distance between them seemed impossible.

Elizabeth leaned back in the chair and groaned. God, what sort of a marriage was this? What was a marriage even supposed to be? Of course plump, healthy babies were part of the bargain, but what about when the bedchamber door closed? What should go on between a husband and wife? She remembered how shocking her first taste of pleasure had been. At the time, she barely knew Cromwell, and what little she did know told her to be afraid of him. But one night, after he had blown out the candles and stripped her bare, he knelt between her legs and ran his tongue over her sex until she whimpered his name. When she had still been clumsy with inexperience, he would pause in his thrusts long enough to caress her sensitive nub until her most intimate muscles tensed around him while he was inside her. In morning's sober light, she would feel so confused that she used to cry on account of it. Their lovemaking had always been tense, sometimes with need, sometimes with anger, sometimes with frustration. Yet, her body wanted his, pure and simple. Elizabeth frowned: her longing was neither pure nor simple.

The Cromwell she stumbled upon that evening was a far cry from the dark prince on her wedding night. She found him in the nursery, hovering over Harr's crib. She watched him watch Harr sleep. Every so often, he reached down to tuck a wayward curl back into Harr's cap or pull the quilt to Harr's chin. She gently placed her hand on his shoulder.

"He will warm to you, Thomas," Elizabeth whispered. "He's just spent so much time with Gregory." Cromwell's shoulders stiffened and she let her hand fall away. "Have you eaten yet? Thomas, when was the last time you ate?"

"What do you suppose he will dream about tonight?" A hint of yearning crept into Cromwell's voice. Elizabeth's heart ached a little when Cromwell said things like that. He took her hand and let her lead him out of the nursery.

They ate a simple dinner of roasted game and preserved fruit. Elizabeth had finished her plate when she looked over to see Cromwell still pushing meat back and forth with his knife.

"Thomas, you might try eating it instead of manhandling it," she observed.

"Do you insist on a cleared plate before I am to be excused?" he attempted a smile. "Lissie, I have been thinking…"

Elizabeth's heart stopped. Nothing good ever followed from those words.

"I need someone I can trust to be in Calais when the king's bride arrives," he said slowly. "At first I thought to send Gregory to protect my interests, but the lords will take one look at him and use him to break their fast."

Elizabeth had a sinking feeling she knew where this conversation was headed.

"If you were to go to Calais, you could—"

"Protect your interests," Elizabeth finished for him. She took a deep sip of wine. "But I have never been abroad. Isn't there someone else, someone more worldly you could send?"

"Calais is not 'abroad.' It's English. And second…" Cromwell's voice dipped low and uncertain. "I have reports that Suffolk has been visiting your brother, Edward. There's-there's—I have no one else I can send. You are the only person I trust enough to send. Lissie, sometimes I think you are my only friend in this world."

Elizabeth groaned and buried her face in her hands. "Well, how is the weather in Calais this time of year?" she asked sardonically.

Miserable.

That was how the weather was in Calais in the iron days of December. She watched the black clouds build over Portsmouth with worry as the royal fleet disembarked. She'd never been out to sea, so when the ship lurched over its first big wave, Elizabeth gave a shout of surprise as she and some of the other ladies were tossed about their cabin below deck. She learned to steel herself as the ship tilted and dipped with the large waves. But constant rocking motion made by the unsteady sea made her sicker than her first pregnancy. She and Jane Boleyn leaned their heads together, sisters in mutual suffering.

"How much longer until Calais?" Jane whimpered.

"Six hours." Elizabeth wiped her face with a kerchief. "The captain said, six bloody hours." Her stomach rolled with the ship, and the stench of sick women crowded together only made it worse. She waited for a lull in the waves before pushing herself to standing.

"Jesus, Mary, and Joseph! Where are you going, Lissie?" Jane called after her.

"Above deck, to get some air!" Elizabeth wobbled through the mess of heels and petticoats.

"You'll wreck your complexion that way," Jane rejoined just before plunging her head into the nearest basin and losing the last of her breakfast.

Once Elizabeth was on deck and could see the ship move with the waves, her insides quieted. She gazed around amazed at the open blankness of the sea. Cromwell had told her that dolphins sometimes followed the ships in the Mediterranean. He had also said that dolphins were not really fish, so what did Cromwell know anyway? Still, she found herself bending over the railing, hoping to catch a glimpse of one of the friendly creatures.

"You're not thinking of jumping, are you?" asked a voice behind her.

"No, Your Grace," Elizabeth said guardedly. "I was told that dolphins sometimes keep time with the ships. I wanted to see one and tell my boy about it."

Charles Brandon joined her on the railing without an invitation. "You should be below deck with the other ladies. You'll wreck your complexion up here," he admonished her.

"If you were cooped up with a dozen vomiting, complaining ladies, you would be up here too."

"Well, here we are again! Two unlikely traveling companions, braving the open seas!" Brandon shouted. He pulled a silver flask from his cloak. "Brandy?" he offered. "To cut against the cold."

Elizabeth held her hand out for the flask and eyed him as she swallowed. "Just because we drink together does not make us friends," she told him as she passed back the flask.

Brandon swigged deeply. "I would not expect it to." He wiped his mouth. "Here, have some more. Put some color back in those cheeks." He regarded her for a moment. "So what's Cromwell's angle? Sending you to do his dirty work for him again?"

"He doubts your intentions with the princess," Elizabeth said plainly.

"I have no quarrel with the Cleves girl. Cromwell's running after shadows on the wall. He has made a world where no one can trust anyone. He cannot even trust himself anymore."

As usual, Charles Brandon came uncomfortably close to the truth. Elizabeth grabbed the flask from his hands and gulped down more before she could agree with him.

"What about you, little Lissie? Where do you fit into his dark, cold world?"

"I'm his wife, I bore his child. You cannot fault me for being loyal."

"Women's loyalty _is _their flaw. I don't know why you reprove me, Lissie. Especially when you are hoarding my brandy right now."

Elizabeth blushed and handed over the flask. "Your Grace, you are up to something. I only pray you leave the king's marriage out of it."

"We could be better friends. We are more than a little alike," Brandon said.

"Do explain," Elizabeth snorted.

"I'm often drawn to a phrase used by the French. They say, 'Praise the God of all, drink the wine, and let the world be the world.' My wife reads many books, most of them she has no business reading. I have never read the Gospels, English or otherwise. I respect their mystery. Yet we tear this country apart so that Gospels may have no more mystery." He studied her for a moment. "I look at you, and I see a woman who does not want to take a side."

Elizabeth shifted uncomfortably at the accuracy of his observation. "I have never been particularly devout, one way or the other," she said carefully.

"You are like me. You just want to live your life in peace and prosperity. Let the others hack themselves to death over communion and Christ."

A pensive silence fell between them for the rest of journey. She never saw a dolphin that she could tell Harr about.

The weary, seasick passengers had barely disembarked from the ship when a massive storm slammed Calais. The princess, traveling overland, would be delayed by the sleet and muddy roads. Chequers Castle overflowed with disgruntled, impatient noblemen and dignitaries. Elizabeth and the other ladies did their best to bat their eye-lashes and let the gentlemen step on their feet and call it dancing. But after two days of huddling together amidst thunder and downpours, tempers were beginning to flare and personalities clashed.

"What did she take the wrong turn off and head for Paris instead?" Jane Boleyn demanded. "I tell you this: she should have taken the North Sea routes. Faster that way."

"But very dangerous," Lady Bryan said sensibly.

"So is an impatient King Henry," Elizabeth sighed. She rested her cheek against a pane of covered glass and watched the sea crash into the cliffs below. Her stomach still churned as if she were at sea.

"Another game of cards?"one of the women offered.

"We have played Hearts, Picquet, Pope Julius a dozen times over," Jane carped.

"Well, make it a baker's dozen, then!" Elizabeth snapped. She stretched out her legs in the window seat that she had claimed all to herself (much to the other ladies' pique)and kicked her shoes off. Lady Bryan made a little tsk-tsk at Elizabeth's exposed ankles. "We are all women in here," Elizabeth mumbled before she dozed off. "I don't see the harm."

She awoke to a harsh elbow in her ribs. Lady Bryan's bony frame hovered over her.

"Madam, the princess has arrived. I suggest you put your shoes back on, young lady," the older woman said sternly.

Elizabeth rolled off the window seat and jammed her feet back into her shoes. Lady Bryan took such long strides that Elizabeth trotted to keep up with her.

"Have you met her?" she asked breathlessly, in between smoothing her scarlet and gold gown. "Have you met the princess?"

Lady Brown spun Elizabeth around. She fussed over her crooked hood and straightened her diamond brooch. A few months ago, Elizabeth had her grand engagement diamond necklace reset into a brooch. If Cromwell knew that she had fallen asleep wearing that jewel, it would have given him a nosebleed.

"There. Now you look fit to meet a princess, even if she is only German," Lady Bryan chided. She shuffled Elizabeth to the front of the great hall so she and Charles Brandon would be the first Englishmen to greet Anne of Cleves. Elizabeth arranged her skirts so the embroidered gold underskirt peeked through, and she pushed her long French sleeves up to better contrast their creamy yellow against the red of her outer skirt. Brandon raised an eye-brow at her fidgeting and was about to reprimand her when his mouth fell open. Elizabeth had been tugging at her amber crusted bodice, but when she straightened, her courtier's mouth went agape. She regained control of herself long enough to jab Brandon with her elbow to remind him to do the same.

The German delegation wore the strangest, most ungainly clothes Elizabeth had ever seen. Their tall hats stood on their heads like chimneys, and their wide, lacy pantaloons billowed out like star fish. One of the men strode up to Elizabeth. He took her hand and shook it so eagerly that she rocked back and forth.

"_Danke! Danke!_" He told her.

Brandon cleared his throat. "Gentleman, we bid you welcome to Calais on this most auspicious occasion."

"_Danke!_" the man said again. He continued to shake Elizabeth's hand as if they were closing a deal over some broadcloth.

Lord Lisle, the governor of Calais, extended his hand to the man. Elizabeth withdrew her own hand gratefully. As Lord Lisle made introductions, Elizabeth and Brandon shared a look that said: Pray God one of them speaks English. Another man bowed and gave them such a cheerful and forward "hello," that the room laughed.

"I think that is Count Olisleger, a Cleves envoy," Brandon whispered. "You need to fix your face: every thought is showing."

Elizabeth planted a bland courtier's smile on her face that promptly slanted into a puzzled look when the German women filed in. Their dresses were shapeless and the bulky headdresses made the women look like walking houses. A lone figure trailed after them and the crowd bowed to her as she made her way up the hall. Elizabeth craned her neck to get a better look at the princess who moved as slowly and shyly as a milkmaid.

"Here she is," Count Olisleger grinned. "Her Highness, Princess Anne, after a long time. My God!" He laughed, but Elizabeth did not understand. It was no laughing matter to keep King Henry waiting.

The German women parted for the princess to come forward. Elizabeth tucked her lower lip in between her teeth to keep her mouth shut. Anne of Cleves, future queen of England, wore an unadorned black gown of middling linen, with a gray gauze veil over her head. Duke William had sent his sister to England as cloistered as a Turkish concubine. Brandon visibly faltered before correcting himself into a bow.

"Your Highness," Brandon said. Elizabeth remembered herself and sank into a curtsey. She deliberately sank much lower than the deference that the Lord Privy Seal's wife owed to an obscure German princess, but she wanted to snatch a peek under Anne's veil.

"Good day, Your Grace," Anne replied in heavily accented English. For a moment, Elizabeth feared that was all the English she knew. Anne turned to Elizabeth. "And you must be Lord Cromwell's wife. They told me I would know you when I saw you," she said shyly. "I am very pleased to meet the wife of such a great man."

Brandon narrowed his eyes at that. "I'm afraid that the bad weather will prevent our sailing for a few days."

"I understand," Anne nodded. "Perhaps Your Grace could…ah…" she fumbled for the English. "…show me how the English are eating?"

Brandon was too gracious to correct her. "Of course," he said simply.

"And…ah…show me something the king likes to do?" she pressed.

My God, Elizabeth thought. I have just met the last guileless woman left in Europe. And they are going to eat her alive at Whitehall.

Anne wanted to dine separately with her ladies, but she asked Elizabeth to join her so that she might teach the princess English table manners. Once she was alone with her women, Anne threw her veil back and sighed.

"There. Much better," she said. She turned and grinned at Elizabeth. Anne of Cleves was as pretty as her picture, with honey brown eyes and a gentle smile. Out of the presence of men, Anne's shyness melted away, and she moved easier, less wooden-like. "May I see your dress?" she asked. Before Elizabeth could say yes or no, Anne sank to her knees to inspect the lavishly embroidered underskirt. She waved her German ladies over and they clucked with approval at the rich satin. Elizabeth looked over the swarm of German women huddled at her skirts to Lady Bryan, who merely shrugged.

"English ladies, they dress like you?" Anne asked eagerly.

"Lady Cromwell is one of the most fashionable women of the English Court," Lady Bryan answered for her. "You would do well to be guided by her in these matters," she said purposefully.

Elizabeth turned her sleeves inside out so that Anne could see the contrasting fabric. In the familiar, comfortable space of women, Anne was forward, inquisitive, an easy woman to befriend. She met Elizabeth's eyes and smiled.

"Your Highness will have gowns like this," Elizabeth said. "Lots more. Richer. Better." She could not help but return Anne's own sincere smile. She was _warm_.

Anne ran her hands over her plain gown self-consciously. "Will the English laugh at me?" she said softly.

"Only if you tell a joke, Your Highness," Elizabeth reassured her. Anne's laughter carried a deep, pleasing tone, like a bell.

Elizabeth demonstrated to Anne how the English held their spoons and knives. How a lady held her wine differently than man. Anne already dined neatly and took dainty bites and small sips of ale, so there was little work to be done. Except for the fact that she made a sour face when sipped unwatered wine. She examined Elizabeth intently over supper.

"Is that a real…ahhh how you say…a diamond?"

"It is, Your Highness." Elizabeth unpinned her brooch and passed it to Anne. The princess's face flushed with barely cloaked absorption. Elizabeth wanted to tell Anne to stop being so damn honest; she made the lot of them look bad.

"Did Lord Cromwell give this to you?" Anne blushed, as if a man giving a woman a present was the most intimate thing he could do to her.

"Yes, it was an engagement present."

"You must have been so pleased to receive this!"

Elizabeth faltered for a moment. She had always blamed the bloody diamond for starting the whole business with Cromwell. She used to wonder what would have happened if she had just accepted the gem and kept her mouth shut. Anne nodded and handed the diamond back to Elizabeth.

"We women marry where we are told," Anne said knowingly. Her brown eyes turned thoughtful. Anne would be easy to dismiss, with her ready smile and kind humor. But her honeyed eyes were patient and observant. Elizabeth wondered if she hid her intelligence out of artifice, or if the princess really thought she was of no account.

After supper, Anne rearranged her veil over her face and came out to play cards. Elizabeth caught Brandon's eye as they set up the card table. The rain drove into the window panes, and every so often, thunder crackled through the sky. At least the storm made it nearly impossible for any courtier who was not a lip-reader to eavesdrop on Elizabeth's conversation.

"What did she look like?" Brandon kept his tone neutral and hushed.

"Oh, you men are all alike!" Elizabeth sniggered. "All you care for are a set of dimples and a pair of tits that rest chin-level." She rolled her eyes and softened. "She looked like her portrait," Elizabeth conceded.

"_Exactly_ like her portrait?" Brandon prodded.

Elizabeth threw down a deck of cards with a thick slap. "Who looks exactly like their portrait?"

"I recall Master Holbein made a rather stark portrayal of your husband."

"I admit that painting is accurate, but I Master Holbein was a little severe in his treatment of Lord Cromwell." Elizabeth threw up her hands as if she could not understand why they were bickering in the first place. "Point is: the princess and the painting closely match. She is a little sun-browned from the journey to be sure."

Brandon opened his mouth to press her further, but shut it when Anne's veiled figure picked her way through the hall. It suddenly occurred to Elizabeth that maybe her movements were so stilted and heavy because the poor thing could barely see through her veil. She quickly offered her arm to guide Anne to the chair that Brandon had waiting.

"They are all watching me," Anne whispered. She was clearly mortified.

"Get used to it," Elizabeth said, not unkindly. "You have nothing private anymore."

"Everyone watch Queen Jane?"

"Yes," Elizabeth said softly. "Everyone watched Queen Jane."

Brandon shuffled the cards. "His Majesty likes to play cards and gamble," he informed her. "Do you play?"

"Oh, no," Anne said, aghast. "I think only men play the cards in my country. Yes?" She looked between Elizabeth and Brandon. "And is it not bad to gamble?"

"Not if you can afford to lose," he said. Elizabeth threw him a look over her cards that said, "let the poor girl win."

"We'll play picquet," Brandon decided. "It's not hard to learn."

"That is good!" Anne gave a little self-deprecatory laugh. Elizabeth wanted to tell her not to do that anymore; she was to be a queen and queens did not self-efface.

"There are four suits of cards," Brandon explained. "Spades, clubs, diamonds, and hearts."

"Hearts? You play with hearts?" Anne teased. She was shy, but honest. Forward, but gentle. And just like that, Elizabeth lost her own heart to the new queen.

"Sometimes." Brandon's own façade weakened at Anne's simple jest. "And here are aces, kings, queens, and knaves."

"Then all the court is here, yes?" Anne continued to kid. A lop-sided grin broke across Elizabeth's face. The princess was trying her best to flirt. But she was too honest to be as good a flirt as the Queen Anne before her. Jane had been coy, but sometimes Elizabeth thought it was all pretext.

Elizabeth parsed out coins between the lady, the princess, and the rake. As she slid a pile of coins across the table, she felt the weight of Anne's veiled stare.

"Does the king always win?" she asked carefully.

"His Majesty does not like losing," Brandon replied with equal precision. Thunder rang across the sky and Brandon took advantage of the distraction to lean close towards Anne. "What have they told you about the king?"

Anne's head swiveled desperately between her companions. "Why?" she asked bluntly. "What is it I should know?"

Brandon tucked himself into his suite of cards and said nothing.

"What is it I should know?" Anne repeated, this time louder.

Elizabeth found she could not meet this woman's sincere eyes and tell her the truth: she was marrying a monster.

IV.

"You like her, admit it," Elizabeth chided as she and Brandon watched for the first sight of Dover.

"She'd melt a heart of ice, I'll warrant," Brandon agreed. "I dare say she might even thaw Lord Cromwell out."

"Just…whatever plotting or scheming you go on about with my brother, leave the new queen out," Elizabeth pleaded.

"Little Lissie, are you planting your feet and taking a side?" Brandon crossed his arms. "Has your husband made a reformer out of you?" He snorted, "England was merry enough before every parish had to have the Bible in English?"

"Merry for whom?" Elizabeth snapped. Her stomach turned sour as she realized she'd let Brandon bait her into another fight. "Merry for lords and ladies? Are not merchants, serving girls, page boys, smithees, and seamstresses just as much an Englishman as you or I?"

"You are overwrought. Perhaps you should rest below deck with the other ladies."

"Perhaps you should leave the history to historians! For a man who prides himself on never opening a book, you offer many opinions on the ideas contained in them!" Elizabeth huffed. "And where is that brandy you are always packing around?"

At Dover, Brandon rode ahead on the road to London, while Elizabeth made a leisurely progress with the new queen. She rode in the litter with Anne. The steady rocking motion did little to calm Elizabeth's seasick guts. Anne chattered along pleasantly enough, eager to practice her English and undeterred by her mistakes. But Anne's very _humanness_ and vulnerability made Elizabeth worry more than she ever had before. King Henry wanted a fairy tale, not authenticity. In Elizabeth's limited experience, men preferred the idea of their women over the substance of flawed flesh.

At least the people took to her immediately. Far from feeling hostile towards a foreign queen, every town, every village, piled into their square to cheer the princess. The women were fascinated by her strange, bell shaped skirts and cylinder pearl headdresses. Women and girls liked her especially, drawn in by her humble goodness. And, they whispered behind their hands, she did not get to the throne of England by stealing another woman's husband. Anne drew confidence from the cheers and flattery. She waved and blew kisses to great applause.

"You think the people not want a Cleves girl. But they do! They smile at me and I smile too."

"Many people in England think it is unwise for the king to marry from English families," Elizabeth said. "The people are happy to have another foreign princess. When the king marries a subject, the bride's family becomes over-mighty." She tracked Anne's face for comprehension.

"But your sister marry king," Anne observed cryptically.

"And my brothers are very powerful men, second only to my husband."

"Sometimes I think it must to be dangerous so close to the king," Anne remarked blandly. She made these flat, honest statements, and Elizabeth wished she knew to keep them to herself. It was as though Anne held up a mirror to Elizabeth's life, and what she saw terrified her.

The wedding party rested at Rochester. Anne tucked herself into a corner of her receiving chamber with her German women. Jane Boleyn sought Elizabeth out just as she tried to make herself scarce.

"Poor thing. She has no idea what is expected of her," Jane said in the tone of a doctor telling you, "there's nothing else I can do."

"She's not some idiot child, Jane," Elizabeth sighed. "She can learn."

"I think she's cleverer than most people give her credit for. But Lissie." Jane turned to face Elizabeth. "How long have you and I been dancing, dealing a pack of cards, picking at a lute?"

"Much of our lives."

"Precisely. We could put that poor lamb through the paces, train her dawn to dusk. But a courtier's manners will never be second nature to her, not like it is with us." They both watched Anne sew with her ladies for a moment. Jane's voice dropped low and toxic. "Do you think she knows what to do?"

"As a queen?"

"As a wife."

Elizabeth was about to tell Jane that Anne was marrying a very experience bridegroom when a herald burst into the chamber.

"A New Years gift!" he called out to the startled women. He bustled forward and thrust out an armful of priceless sables. Jane and Elizabeth rose to receive the visitor when their hearts stopped.

"Oh my-" Jane muttered.

"God," Elizabeth finished.

Henry Tudor strutted into the gallery. He moved so quickly towards Anne that she was petrified. Elizabeth could almost see her rabbit pulse rapidly beat as this strange man advanced on her. Anne stood so still as if hoped, like a child, that is she did not move, this imposing man could not see her. Henry, so used to meeting with female admiration wherever he went, checked at Anne's inhibition. Her lack of enthusiasm cut down Henry's broad smile. Anne plummeted into a curtsey when she put together the man's princely stature with the hushed awe he brought into the room.

"Madam," Henry said brusquely.

Anne stayed frozen in her curtsey. Henry glanced around impatiently at the room, as if anyone could save the day now. Finally, he motioned with his hand for her to rise.

"Your Majesty." Anne kept her eyes on her shoes. A born English flirt would know to peek out at the king from under her eyelashes, not stand there like a child awaiting a spanking. Henry pushed forward, and Anne stepped back. He lurched forward again and shoved his lips to hers. Anne broke off the kiss. Henry regarded her for a moment.

"Madam, I have come to welcome you to my realm." He stepped back from her abruptly. "I trust you are comfortable here, before your journey to London."

"Thank you, Your Majesty," Anne whispered, barely audible.

"I will see you anon." Henry rounded on his polished heel without another look back. Panicked, Anne watched as the gentlemen filed out as rapidly as they appeared. Her hands flew to her face, and she buckled at her knees. Anne crumpled into a chair and tearfully murmured to her ladies.

"And thus, Tristan met his Isolde," Jane quipped. Elizabeth just shook her head. Anne had failed her first test of courtly love, and Henry would never forgive for it. He would never forgive her for reminding him that he was a man just as ordinary as any other.

V.

"Mama! Mama!" Harr bounced into Elizabeth's arms with the force of a cannonball. She smothered him in kisses until he laughed and pulled away.

"You left!" he wagged his finger at her. Elizabeth pulled him tighter, so she could breathe him in. He smelled of lavender and milk and everything that was good and pure in the world.

"What went wrong?"

Elizabeth withdrew her face from Harr's mop of curls to find Cromwell standing in the doorway of the nursery. His hands had balled into such tight fists that his ringed fingers went white. She could practically hear his jaw grind.

"It wasn't her fault," Elizabeth said quickly. She pulled herself to standing with Harr in her arms. He flopped his feet in the air, blissfully unaware of the storm about to break over his world.

"As soon as the king returned, he called a meeting of the council. She must have done something to displease him," he barked.

"It. Wasn't. Her. Fault," Elizabeth enunciated. Her voice took on an edge, but she minded her volume. "The king burst in and startled her. He kissed her full on the lips, and she was too shy to respond. Not her fault."

"Well, the king thinks it is someone's fault! He believes he has been misled. Why did you not write to say there was something unusual about her appearance?"

"Because there was nothing to write," Elizabeth said tiredly. "She is the same girl in the portrait. She's drawn and sun browned from traveling across half of Europe. Can you blame her?" She handed Harr to Cromwell. "I'm for my bath." Over her shoulder she said, "You are supposed to be her ally, Thomas. Not the first to cast stones."

Harr fidgeted for a moment before letting Cromwell hold him, as if to say, "Well, I suppose you will do for now."

"Story?" Harr asked brightly.

"No, sweetheart, not right now," Cromwell said.

"Grey-ry have stories," Harr sighed dejectedly.

When Elizabeth pulled back the covers of her bed that night, it was to discover Harr in her place. She raised an eye-brow.

"When did this start?" she asked Cromwell's back, which was hunched away from her.

"He says he has bad dreams. That he can't sleep. Personally, I think his nurse snores."

"Thomas, he is taking advantage of you. My mother used to say: give a mouse a piece of biscuit and he will ask you for some milk." But she could not say she minded curling up next to Harr's sleeping form on a night like this. She blew out the candles and pulled Harr to her. Cromwell pitched an arm over the both of them. Safe in her little ark, Elizabeth allowed herself to feel safe again. God knew the king would ring a storm over their heads in the morning, but for now Elizabeth savored the warmth of her bed and Harr's steady breath.

"Go ahead and say it," Cromwell grumbled.

"Say what? Say good-night?"

"Just say what you are thinking."

Elizabeth inhaled deeply. "Thomas Cromwell: I told you so."


	24. Chapter 24

**I know, I know, I have not updated in forever and a day. So lots of love to my loyal reviewers and readers that are still with me. I had some serious writer's block and lost Lissie's voice for a while. But hopefully it has come back, and I can finish her story. The ending is still an open question, so if you have strong feelings one way or another, then please don't be shy about letting me know!**

**Oh, and I have cribbed a few of the lyrics from "Latter Days," by Over the Rhine. And "Kiss with a Fist," by Florence + The Machine. They appear scattered throughout the dialogue, just want to give credit where credit is due.**

"No, no. She did not slap him," Elizabeth explained tiredly. She stood with the Duke and Duchess of Suffolk as they awaited Anne of Cleves's formal presentation to the king. "I am surprised Your Grace has allowed such falsehoods to flourish," she said with a pointed glare at Brandon.

"Well, the people love her," Catherine said. "I woke up one day and half our servants had disappeared, run down to the riverbanks to see the princess's barge make its way to London. They were beaming ear to ear—"

"Wonder how much Cromwell had to pay out for that adoration," Brandon cut in. Catherine rolled her eyes, but did not acknowledge the affront.

"They said she waved and blew kisses to them," Catherine continued. "The girl who changes my linen got a good look, said the princess was quite pretty."

"She _is _pretty," Elizabeth reiterated. "His Majesty just had an awkward start with her." She almost said more but bit her lip. Elizabeth knew all about bad beginnings with husbands she had no say in choosing.

"You must thank Lord Cromwell for all the fruit tarts and…other pastries," Catherine said carefully. "They brighten the season, and my heart. Where does he find such…rarities at this time of year?"

"Give him a few men and a boat." Elizabeth shrugged. "And he will track down the Golden Fleece for you in a month's time." Out of the corner of her eye, she checked Brandon's face to see if he registered any comprehension that they were not really talking about fruit tarts. His eyes followed one woman after another; Elizabeth would be surprised if he heard a single word his wife had just said. She was about to thank Catherine for being so gracious about abdicating her apartments at Whitehall when the trumpets blasted to herald the arrival of Anne of Cleves.

Anne knotted her hands together as she carefully trod the length of the hall to her bridegroom. She held her chin high in defiant dignity, but her soft, rabbit eyes told a different story. This woman is no fool, Elizabeth thought. She knows the ugly stories that King Henry has told his councilors. She knows that her husband to be has called her a horse, a Flanders mare to everyone in earshot.

"That poor dear," Catherine murmured as she sank in curtsey when Anne passed by. The future queen of England wore a red, jewel encrusted kirtle, but in the awkward cranach pattern. Her bodice showed off her slim waist, yet the bell-shaped skirt hung like a stiff cone. Not at all like the easy rustle of the other ladies' petticoats. The sort of skirts a man could chase through a garden maze.

Anne's breath caught in the middle of her throat as Henry approached her. She put on a brave face, but Elizabeth could see her eyes tighten in fear at whatever embarrassment would follow. But Henry Tudor was as good an actor that ever led a troupe. He gently gripped her shoulders and pressed his lips to hers: a chaste and loyal knight. Anne smiled shyly; her relief revealed a hidden dimple.

"My lady, I am here to welcome you to what is yours," Henry said.

"Your Majesty is very gracious," Anne replied in obviously practiced English. "I am very happy," she added.

Cromwell initiated a round of applause. To any other courtier, Cromwell appeared just as black and imposing as he had always been, carrying with him an impermeable wall of power, the sort of blunt force that made people forget a man of mere flesh and blood lived and breathed under those robes and chain of office. He wore his usual enigmatic face, but Elizabeth knew better. Not that he had been bearing his soul to her over firelight and white wine.

He did not need to tell her anything, not when she could read him like a text. She marked the way his shoulders slouched just a degree forward, and his murky eyes widened in eagerness. Or worse yet—hope. He caught her studying him, and perhaps something showed across her face, because he straightened himself and clapped his hands with more sureness. I am the only person in this court who knows this man, Elizabeth admitted to herself. She could not be sure if she felt honored or disconcerted at the privilege.

Henry held out his hand for the Lady Mary to meet her new step-mother. She swept a regal curtsey. But her face told a different story. Her lips curled as if she were sucking on a lemon. Fortunately, the little Princess Elizabeth wore a grin as bright as the flowers she carried. She handed them to her new step-mother.

"For you," she said. "I think they are pretty."

Anne's cheeks lit up with the simple, childish gesture. "Thank you, and I think you are pretty, too," she smiled. She took in both Mary and Elizabeth. "I shall love them both," Anne declared without any prompting. She tilted her head and smiled again. The warmth of her smile, the openness of her words. Anne of Cleves was like a salve for a court decaying from its own excesses.

Cromwell started another round of applause. His face softened a little, and Elizabeth wondered if some long forgotten corner of his heart had been warmed. Or maybe he just felt sorry for her. Elizabeth snorted to herself. When was the last time Cromwell pitied anyone?

II.

Elizabeth took a midnight bath that night. Most evenings, she relished sinking down to her chin and inhaling the smell of mint and lavender. But tonight, she made quick work of it as though it were a chore. She scrubbed under her arms and behind her ears. The more she relived Henry shouting about a "Flanders mare," the angrier she became. She scoured her toes and rubbed harder.

"A horse? A horse?" she muttered to herself. "Men want Venus, Virgin Mary, and Jezebel in one body. Ha. Take a good look at themselves, that's what they ought to do. Take a long look at that open, oozing ulcer in the mirror."

She slapped the water with her coarse linen cloth in frustration. When she brushed the cloth against her breasts, she recoiled. They were so tender as to be stinging. Elizabeth bolted up in the water. No. Not possible. She rested her forehead against her knees, desperately counting backwards. Had she missed her last monthly course? But they were always irregular. Elizabeth sat as still as possible. Her unsettled stomach? Must be the sea voyage, must be the dirty food in Calais, she told herself. But as she dried herself and knotted her silk nightgown around her waist, even the sheer fabric made her breasts ache.

Elizabeth sat before her gilt mirror as one of her maids worked the lice comb through her wet hair. She studied her face; the girl in her was gone forever. In a few months, she would be twenty-six, not young anymore. She thought, this is a me that Jane would not recognize.

"How old are you?" she asked the maid.

"Fifteen, my lady," she squeaked.

"When I was fifteen, I married, and then near to died of boredom and cold in Yorkshire."

"So lucky to find a husband so soon," the girl breathed enviously.

"Believe me, there is no rush," Elizabeth advised. The girls who had joined her household when she first married Cromwell had all left, having found husbands of their own. She missed having another woman around. For gossip. For advice. Kit was shameless enough that Elizabeth could have walked into the room, bared her breasts, and asked, "How do my nipples strike you? Is there a baby in me or no?"

She jolted in her seat when the door flew open. Cromwell dismissed the little maid with the snap of his fingers. Husband and wife regarded one another's reflections for a moment. Then he picked up one of her ivory combs and eased it through Elizabeth's hair.

"Lissie," he said shortly. "I told you: we cannot risk having too many ears around at night. Harr needs his nurse, and that is all." Cromwell studied their images again as he stood behind her. "You have to do something about the princess's dress," Cromwell went on. He pulled the comb through her hair with long, firm strokes. He took surprising care when he hit a tangle. "My father's horses always liked me best. My sisters were not the most tender with the brush." He shook his head of the past and returned to present. "But, Lissie, say something to her about her dress. See that she has new ones made up right away."

"She is German, not blind. She knows she sticks out. She wants new gowns. But, Thomas," Elizabeth turned around to look Cromwell in the face. "Do you realize what a fight it was to get her to let her braids show? Her whole life, she has been told to cover every inch of skin, and never let a man see her hair." She snatched the comb out of his hands. "And _I did_ set the dressmakers to work. But they only have two hands and so many hours in a day."

He slumped against the vanity. "All I hear is: 'she looks like a horse. She should never have been brought here. Mr. Cromwell: I am not well handled. Mr. Cromwell, she looks like a mare. Can we not trade her in for a French one?'"

Elizabeth smiled bitterly. Cromwell did an uncanny take on a spoiled, raging Henry. One another night, in another life, she might have laughed.

"He said to me, 'how could she not know me? A lady would always know her true love, even if he were in disguise.' Does any man believe in that courtly nonsense after the age of fifteen?"

"Our king, apparently," Elizabeth groaned. "Are we to be unmade by this?" she asked. Cromwell wiped his hands across his face and did not answer her exactly.

"His Majesty wants to escape through this pre-contract business with the Duke of Lorraine. And I am sick to death of making things so damn easy for him."

III.

"What. Is. She. Wearing." Anne Stanhope drew out each word like yarn. Elizabeth's cheeks burned on behalf of the royal bride. Mercifully, only a select few nobles gathered in the chapel to watch the king marry his "Flanders mare." Elizabeth stood in between Cromwell and Anne Stanhope, while Edward glared at them all across the aisle. I do believe I will be taking my wine tonight with no water, Elizabeth thought.

"Have you any idea how much care and expense went into spinning all that silver into thread?" Elizabeth threw over her shoulder.

"And that changes the fact she appears to be wearing a sack of flour?" Anne shrugged. For all the fortune spun into that wedding dress, the shapeless gown hung off the princess's body in bulges. "What is on her head?" Anne screeched. Elizabeth whirled around to face her sister-in-law.

"It is supposed to represent rosemary, for remembrance: a custom from her country. And Anne, mind your words and your tone. For a woman wearing a gown and hood _I_ cast off a year ago, you are entirely too pleased with yourself," she sniped.

Henry wore a face of thunder to his wedding. He passed by Cromwell with a sneer and made no effort to wipe his face clean as he approached his bride. Elizabeth used to think that the most miserable wedding she had ever attended was her own, but now she believed that this matrimony would take the prize. At the wedding banquet, the new queen smiled and clapped along with the beat of music she could not dance to. She laughed as her husband led other women to dance. Her dimples did not fade as the king winked at girls as young as Lady Mary, but she held out her cup for wine more than even Francis Bryan.

Of course, Jane Boleyn had an opinion to offer on the whole matter as she and Elizabeth readied the royal bed for another consummation. They spread dried rose petals in between the layers of linen sheets. Jane snapped a cotton quilt over the mattress.

"What if she does not know what to do?"

"Not know what?" Elizabeth asked tiredly as she sprinkled a final layer of rose petals on the fine Indian cotton.

"You _know _what," Jane insisted. "Perhaps I should advise her-"

"Do not even think it!" Elizabeth shoved her open palm in Jane's face. "Lady Bryan is helping her into her nightgown. If there is any uncertainty about what appendage goes where, Lady Bryan will enlighten her."

" 'Lighten me what?"

Jane and Elizabeth blushed scarlet as Anne entered through the privy door. She tugged her robe tight at the neck.

"_Ja_. I understand. I understand what a man do to a woman," Anne said. "I have seen stallions with the mares. I am not so stupid; I know what happens," she muttered as she yanked a chair out for herself. Elizabeth rushed to help her, but the new bride shoved her hands away. "Here, do this. Help me shuffle these cards, so I do not win instead of the king."

Jane made little use of herself, rearranging the flower petals on the bed, and Elizabeth tried to stack the deck so that Anne would not win and upset the king any further.

"How is it?" Anne asked in her stunted English. "It will hurt, _ja_?"

"Depends on the manner," Jane said darkly.

"Mostly, it is just uncomfortable," Elizabeth reassured Anne. She almost added: and it depends on how many times he has you. But she just kept her eyes on her work. Why terrify this nice girl any more?

"I do not know what to do."

"Let His Majesty proceed as he will." Elizabeth handed the pre-shuffled deck to Anne. Jane had never told Elizabeth precisely how the king went about his heir making duties, but she always assumed that if he were cruel or depraved, Jane would have said something. Then again, Elizabeth never gave a full account of her own wedding nights to a soul. Her first, ancient husband had been limp as an overcooked turnip, so he settled for suckling her nipples with his gummy mouth.

Cromwell?

He took her three times on their first night together, and might have attempted a fourth go if he did not have to rise with the sun and govern England.

"You will be fine," Elizabeth assured Anne. "Relax yourself. Make yourself warm and kind to his Majesty."

"But not too kind, not too eager," Jane added. "You should be chaste."

"But do not be so cold and distant that he thinks he does not please you," Elizabeth amended. "Place a pillow under your hip. It will make things easier."

"_No_," Jane disagreed. "Because then His Majesty will think you are experienced, and not a virgin."

"Jane, you do not know of what you speak."

"Lissie, we are two married women, here—"

"Stop it! Both of you!" Anne cried. She hunched over the table and buried her face in her nightgown.

IV.

"What remedy, Master Cromwell?"

Cromwell turned away from the fireworks display to face Ralph Sadler. Was the boy mocking him, using the king's constant refrain: what remedy Mr. Cromwell? What remedy? But Ralph's wide eyes moistened. The boy was scared, as well they should all be.

"Ralph, we must have faith. All shall be well. And it is still the Feast of the Epiphany. We might have some vision yet to save us." Cromwell absently rubbed at the back of his head. A neat bump was forming where his skull had cracked against the mantelpiece when he delicately told the king, "there was no remedy that was possible to discover."

"What about her pre-contract, with the Duke of Lorraine?" Ralph pressed. He edged towards Cromwell on that lonely balcony. This night should have been the crown jewel in Cromwell's career. Yet, he secluded himself like a leper, rather than face the jeers of Suffolk and Gardiner.

"Find out if the contract was oral or written. Find out if she repudiated it in word or in writing. Send out for the original if possible; we can translate the German," Cromwell instructed. He felt a little of his power flow back to him as he rattled off the order.

"So, we are going to annul the marriage?" Ralph pursued.

"No," Cromwell said firmly. "We are going to save it—and England. And, Ralph-" Cromwell almost patted Ralph elbow but decided against it. "Enjoy yourself tonight. Go dance with the other young people and drink a toast to the new queen. Whatever mistakes have been made…the shame is mine to bear alone. You make merry tonight. This is a wedding, after all."

"Thank you, sir," Ralph whispered.

Cromwell turned back to his solitary post and watched the colors explode across the dark, winter sky. He could not bear to look at Ralph's rosy face one moment more, otherwise he would have to admit that he had failed Ralph and all those connected to him. He had failed the Reformation. Worst, he had failed the Cromwell family. What remedy? What remedy? I'll give you a remedy, Henry Tudor, he thought. Pull your selfish head out of your royal ass. How like Your Majesty that remedy? Some men loved or feared their prince. Some men perhaps loathed theirs. But Cromwell could not attach a name to the acid that rose in his throat every time the king said things like, "Well, as the head of my own church, perhaps I will just make my own dispensation."

A patter of footsteps startled him into half drawing the dagger he kept folded in his sleeve. These bloody days. But his periphery caught a flash of copper hair and tiny, bare feet. No assassin, only a runaway princess. A bastard princess, he corrected himself. Cromwell's own hand prepared the paperwork to have Elizabeth Tudor declared illegitimate as any spawn of a random tussle in a hayloft. But tonight, he swept her as grand a bow as if she were the queen of England.

"My gracious lady," he said to the petulant little girl. She frowned and held out her arms.

"Up," she demanded. "I want to see the fireworks. My governess says I cannot, that it is too much excitement, but I want to see them."

Cromwell glanced over his shoulders before he swung Elizabeth into his arms. God only knew how hard the king would strike him for taking such license with his daughter. She was heavier than she appeared, barrel chested and stout. Less like a child and more like a soldier. They watched the fireworks in silence together. She wrapped a plump arm around his neck and rested her weight against him. Children always amazed Cromwell with their easy way of affection. His Anne and Grace used to clamber into his lap while he was working and play with his curls. Then they would slide down nonchalantly, as if their father were not as low as they came: a Putney smithee, the sort any moneyed merchant's daughter ought not have any business.

Every so often, he checked Elizabeth's face to see if she flinched at _booms _and the _pops_. She didn't shy away at all. In between the explosions, he told her:

"Perhaps we will have fireworks like this for your wedding."

"Maybe." She did not sound particularly enthused. "But what if I have to go to a faraway land? I don't want to leave England."

"Rest assured, your father will choose the greatest knight in Christendom for your hand."

"But, I won't be queen," she sighed. Cromwell turned to look at her. She was a little girl, but her eyes were her mother's. And Anne Boleyn's eyes had been hooks for men's souls. She had commanded men with those eyes. Why could not the same be for this determined child?

"You know…," he said negligently. He would later blame it on the wine, but really on that night, he felt as though he had nothing left to lose. "My lady, you could yet be a queen. Perhaps not in England. But somewhere."

"I would not know how to be a queen. But I am very good at Latin and arithmetic," she said as she toyed with his chain of state.

"Oh, no one is born knowing how to be a queen." Cromwell paused, then threw all sense to wind as he allowed himself to dream. "You would need loyal advisers, councilors who will tell you the truth and not flatter." For only a moment, Cromwell was one of those dreamers he detested. Yet, he imagined a world where Anne Boleyn's daughter was queen, guided by Cromwell, Cranmer, and Wyatt. Stranger tides had turned. Prince Edward looked as though a strong wind might blow him away. The Lady Mary could be sold off to a foreign prince that the English people would never accept. But Cromwell shook his head. None of that would ever be.

"My lady!" Kat Ashley gasped. "There you are! You had me worried sick!" She bustled towards them both with open arms. As Cromwell handed off the princess, Kat apologized. "Please my Lord Cromwell, please do not tell anyone I lost sight of her. I swear up and down that I only looked away for a moment."

"Children are like that," he said wryly.

"Now you must not bother Lord Cromwell, he is a very important man about very important business," Kat scolded her charge.

"She was no bother. Listen, Kat," he began uneasily. She flinched a little and tensed, as if readying herself for a scolding. Why did people always do that when he addressed them? "Just…just," he searched for the words. "Watch over her, Kat. Promise me that you will always watch over her," he finished.

As he watched them go, Cromwell prayed. Not to God, or a martyred saint, or a pagan goddess. He prayed to Anne Boleyn. Please, please lead me out of this Cleves mess. Guide me, and I will devote my life to making your daughter queen, he prayed. But, he knew better than to ask for forgiveness.

V.

Elizabeth chose not to sit up with the rest of the court and watch the newlyweds play round after round of piquet. She heaved a sigh of relief as her maid let her out of her stays. Her tender breasts were practically screaming after having been smashed against her stiff bodice all day. Elizabeth groaned as she crawled beneath the sheets. She needed to tell Cromwell about the baby sooner rather than later. She winced at her own cynicism, but they would need a plan for this latest pregnancy. Yet again, courtiers would observe her rounding belly and compare it to the queen's flat stomach. Yet again, people would whisper behind their hands about the minister's fecund wife and the childless queen. In a sick pit of her stomach, Elizabeth knew there would be no more babies in the royal nursery. Henry had been impotent with Anne, and Jane told her that the worse his leg became, the more limp his member.

"God save the queen," she muttered into her pillow. She drifted off into a troubled sleep, in which she dreamed she was trying to pull a small child out of a well. But his tiny hand was too slippery. She never saw his face, and even though she braced her feet, the child managed to pull her into the darkness with him. She awoke at the shifting weight in the mattress as Cromwell threw the covers over him. They did not touch, but Elizabeth could feel the tenseness in the form beside her. She kept waiting for him to relax into sleep, but his lanky body remained taut as a drawn bow. Finally, they both rolled over to face each other.

"Thought you would be sitting up with the rest of the court," Cromwell said. His dark eyes were red rimmed and bleary. He had been drinking, and if Elizabeth had to guess, he had done so alone.

"I was tired. And I wanted to see Harr. But I find I cannot sleep. What has the king said?"

"I advised His Majesty to get to know the lady better, and he snaps that he does not want to know her better. Like a child."

"Well, he is going to 'get to know her better' tonight whether either of them like it or no," Elizabeth said ruefully. She wove her hands into his and rested her cheek against his knuckles. Now would be a good time to tell him about the new baby, but he spoke up before she opened her mouth.

"But there is something else: he says she revolts him. What if he cannot…"Cromwell's voice trailed off. He had never spoken this plainly, or dangerously. George Boleyn put his own head on the block when he proclaimed the king's impotence in open court. "Does she know what to do?" he asked baldly.

"I think so."

"You _think _so," Cromwell muttered. "I placed you as a member of the queen's household so that you can _know _these things." His voice titled with a harsh edge. Elizabeth released his hands and wriggled away. When he spoke like that, it only reminded her of why he made everyone so skittish in the first place.

"She knows what a husband does to his wife," she defended. "She's as anxious as any bride on her wedding night. Perhaps she fumbles, perhaps she does not know what to do. The king appreciated Jane's shyness from what I recall."

"You weren't anxious our first night together, were you?" Cromwell mused.

"Goodnight, Thomas." Elizabeth rolled back over. His fingers pushed aside her plait and stroked the small vertebrae of her neck. He gently kissed her from nape to shoulder blades.

"Not tonight," she sighed.

"Dove, I'm sorry I raised my voice to you just now," he whispered against her skin. His fingers moved towards her breasts, but she caught his hands before they brushed the tender flesh.

"Not tonight," she repeated. He dropped his hands to her hip bones and gave up the proposition. They breathed together like that for a while, each thinking their own thoughts.

"Will he be kind to her?" Elizabeth wondered aloud. Cromwell pulled her closer but kept his silence. What was there to say? The king had done away with two wives whom he had loved deeply. It was too frightening to speculate what he might do with a wife he despised.

Elizabeth dozed on and off, but never really slept. Dawn actually came as something of a relief from all the thoughts spinning round her head. She washed up and dressed with Cromwell. She had the sense they were comrades, suiting one another up for battle: he laced her into her gown, and she draped his gold chain over his shoulders. They both planted a kiss on Harr's cheek as he slept soundly, content in his parents' love and unaware of the waves about to break. Neither of them said good morning or farewell to one another.

She found Jane Boleyn skulking around the door to the queen's privy chambers. At least that nosy-nelly did not have her ear pressed to the door or her eye to the keyhole. They both jumped when the doors flew open. Henry stormed past them in his fur trimmed scarlet robe, with the faint stink of his wound trailing. Elizabeth and Jane peered cautiously into the room.

"Where is she?" Jane whispered.

"Probably at her bath, if I had to guess."

"How do you know?"

Elizabeth shrugged. "It was the first thing I did the morning after my wedding. Lady Bryan probably had the tub waiting for her."

Jane shoved her way around Elizabeth. She glanced over her shoulder. "What? We are both here at this hour for the very same reason. We need a look at those sheets before the chambermaids get to them."

Nothing in the room indicated a violent struggle, but nothing suggested a night of passion. The bed looked barely used, only the sheets were tossed aside on the right and left. I am digging around wedding linens with Jane Boleyn, Elizabeth thought. How did I ever arrive at this day? They threw aside the bed linens and scoured each inch of cloth searching for a stain, anything to prove this bed had been used for something other than sleeping. Finally, they both climbed over the mattress, tearing the sheets from the bed. The room smelled of an open wound, but not of sex.

"Nothing," Jane concluded.

"Nothing," Elizabeth agreed.

"What in God's name are you both doing?" Lady Bryan thundered as she burst into the room. "Have some decency and get down from the queen's bed this instant!" She rubbed her temples. "Easier running a nursery than corralling you both."

Elizabeth rolled off the bed with as much grace as she could muster. "Where is the queen?"

"In a bath hot enough to scald Lucifer. By God, she will be the prettiest smelling queen in Europe if I have my way," Lady Bryan sniffed. She beckoned Elizabeth and Jane with the crook of her finger. "There was no stain on her nightgown, no blood on her thighs." They all shared a meaningful look that said we will keep this women's business between ourselves. Even the queen folded herself into their conspiracy and did not say a word except "please" and "thank you." Anne sat quietly as Elizabeth fixed the yellow diamond diadem into her hair. Jane's jewels on another woman's head. Elizabeth supposed that was the way of the world, but a lump grew in her throat. Anne fiddled with the low neckline of her new gown and caught Elizabeth's eye.

"Queen Jane wear this?" Anne pointed to her head.

"Yes, they are part of the jewels of the queens."

"These jewels have passed through many queens, many wives," Anne said knowingly. She held Elizabeth's gaze for what seemed an eternity. She tugged at her wedding ring. "The king does not like me." Anne said it in the same way others remarked that it would probably rain today. "I am not pretty enough."

"Your Majesty is very lovely," Elizabeth said sternly. She refused to allow the queen to believe the poison Henry spread about her. Anne's hair cascaded down her back like a thick pour of honey and her eyes were small, but inviting. She was a lovely woman that many men would count themselves lucky to call their own.

"Not pretty, not like you." Anne sounded…resigned. As if she was used to being invisible. Elizabeth knelt before the queen.

"If I am to be honest," Elizabeth admitted. "My beauty has brought me very little joy in my life. My mother was the most beautiful woman in Wiltshire, but her heart broke just the same when she found my father with other women." Elizabeth clasped the new queen's hands. "For what it is worth, beauty fades quickly, the shortest spring. The only thing that lasts is love. And I have a boy who loves me, who thinks that I can make the sun rise and set. I had a sister that I loved as my truest friend, and I still love her. You will find joy, Your Majesty, I promise you. You will have love, in one way or another."

Anne looked away and gazed out the window where a steady stream of sleet bounced off the glass. "_Ach_. Are English winters always this bad?" she asked.

"It gets better. Things will be warmer in spring, you'll see," Elizabeth promised.

VI.

"Would you like the bad news or the good news first?" Richard Rich asked Cromwell.

"Pour us both a glass of wine first, so I can take the bitter tidings like a man." He usually did not take wine before noon, but it had become more of a habit over the past few months. It started the morning after the wedding, when Henry told him the new queen had slack breasts and foul odors, so he could not supply a royal salute. The king's daily impotence was Cromwell's daily reminder that his place as first minister was tottering at best.

Cromwell had pinpointed the moments when Henry had turned on Wolsey and More, when king and minister broke in the same way lovers turned on one another. Unlike Wolsey and More, Cromwell always had a plan because unlike Wolsey and More, there was nothing he would not do. Lately, he had been making discreet inquiries about land purchases in Zurich and Basel. Unlike Wolsey and More, Cromwell knew when to shut up and sail for fairer shores. He could be a private banker again, and Lissie might learn to like Switzerland.

"The queen has asked to see you again, by the way. Thomas, you cannot keep avoiding her. She is the queen. You cannot pretend otherwise," Rich admonished.

Cromwell shrugged. Anne of Cleves had sent a steady stream of requests for an audience with him. He received one every other day, which he promptly chucked into the fire. They both had the stink of failure about them; what more was there to discuss? Besides, the less people associated him with the Cleves girl, the better.

"Oh, the bad news: Lord Surrey, Henry Howard, is returning from France," Rich said.

"We will be sure to lock our wives in the cellar. You said there was good news, Richie."

"Have a look for yourself." Rich tossed over a large piece of paper neatly folded into three columns. Cromwell scanned the figures, then he put down his wine to inspect closer.

"Are you sure about these numbers?" he asked.

"You do not trust your own clerks, your own accountants that you trained yourself?" Rich laughed. "I didn't believe at first. But, Thomas, the revenue our ships are culling from the new trade routes in the North Sea...incredible. The wool merchants especially are doing well with the favorable tariff and quota terms with the Protestant League. Over the next few years, it could amount to the treasure appropriated from the religious houses." Rich stared into his wine cup. "Show the king to improve your standing. You could be untouchable again."

"His Majesty will see this income and immediately figure out a way to spend it on himself. I look at this wealth, and all I can think is, how much will be diverted to building Nonsuch Palace, and how much will actually make it to the treasury." Cromwell finished his wine in single gulp. "I swear to God I will not let England slide into debt again, not as long as I have life left to serve the commonwealth." Or at least as long as he remained on English soil.

"Something else," Rich lowered his voice. "I thought we had said we would…lay low. At least while the king continues his current…more conservative religious policy."

"You know me, Richie. I can kneel to the Host and cross myself by rote," Cromwell shrugged. He had been hiding in plain sight as an enemy of the state for the past five years. Why stop now?

"So, you think it is prudent to allow a state visit of Duke Phillip of Bavaria?"

Cromwell collapsed back in his chair. "Duke Phillip, the queen's cousin, is coming to England?" He held out his glass for a much needed refill. "When did all this come about?" he gasped. "Does the king know?"

"We've intercepted some of the queen's letters. Apparently, she has taken it into her hands to instruct her ambassadors to make overtures to the duke. And in her letters, she has been quite blunt that the king be kept out of it." Rich whistled through his teeth. "Another head strong queen, eh?"

Cromwell hurtled himself from his chair. "A headstrong queen?" he hissed. "That girl is going to be a head shorter if she keeps apace!" He stalked out of his offices, leaving Rich to jog after him.

"Should I send a page to tell Her Majesty to expect you?" Rich asked.

"She seems to think everyone enjoys surprises. Let us see how she enjoys this one!" The court parted like the Red Seas for Cromwell. All they could see was that he was on a warpath towards the queen's rooms. And everyone knew how that story usually ended. He took a moment to smooth his hair and master himself before he entered the queen's presence chamber. The usher almost announced him, but Cromwell silenced the boy with a farthing. Cromwell counted backwards from ten in five different languages before he forced his way into the most female of worlds.

The ladies had arranged themselves like a tableau. One of them plucked at a lute, while another sorted embroidery silk. He followed the music of a fiddle and harpsichord to find Elizabeth patiently walking the queen through some basic dances. Her pink cheeks went ashy when she whirled around and saw her husband staring down the queen.

"_Ach_. Lord Cromwell, you received my invitation," Anne said, stubbornly cheerful. "Will you take some wine? I find it makes me a better dancer." She giggled a little at her own joke. Anne was still self-effacing, but she seemed more sure of herself in her new gowns.

Elizabeth served them all. "Why don't you try a little water with your wine," she told him coolly as she passed him a cup.

"Did Your Majesty invite the Duke of Bavaria to the English court?" Cromwell started in without any pleasantries. Anne tilted her head and smiled.

"Yes, I did," she said simply. "He is my cousin. He asked me about the Princess Mary, so I invite him."

"Madame, such matters of state belong to the king, _and his ministers_." His jaw clenched with the effort to keep his cool politician mask from slipping.

"Just a visit, no politics," Anne reiterated. "And he is such a kind, handsome young man…and with the Lady Mary still unmarried-"

"Lady Mary's marriage _is _a matter of state." Cromwell's volume went soft the angrier he became.

"Spring seems to have come early," Anne continued, wholly unperturbed. "So, I think now is a good time for him to travel to England. He really is a handsome man—"

"Majesty, you should be guided by my husband in these matters," Elizabeth interrupted. Her voice was barely above a whisper. She hugged her elbows and stared at her jewel tipped heels. Anne's face swiveled between Elizabeth's downcast look and Cromwell's intense gaze. Finally, the queen folded her arms across her fitted bodice, entrenching herself.

"Duke Phillip is my cousin, so I invited him," she repeated flatly. "That is all. I think we shall have a celebration to welcome him and springtime. With many entertainments for the king. I think His Majesty would enjoy that very much," she finished. She tilted her head again in her disarming fashion. "And now, Lord Cromwell, you must be going, _ja_? Your wife tells me you are a most busy man, and that is why you could not visit me sooner." She turned her back on him without another word. Cromwell thundered through the halls, oblivious to courtiers waving papers in front of his face. He picked up his pace, so his keen ears would not have to listen to the whispers that the nice German girl had just upbraided the Lord Privy Seal in front of all her ladies. He was almost to the garden mazes when he hit an unwelcome obstacle.

"Cromwell, Cromwell, just the man I was looking for," Francis Bryan beamed.

"I know my name, no need to repeat it," Cromwell huffed. He dodged past Francis, but the Black Pope sidestepped to entrap Cromwell.

"Small thing, won't sap much of your precious time," Francis began. "But I have run short of cash this month—you know how it is, servants always stealing away with the silver—"

"Can't say I have ever had that problem in my household. My ledgers always balance. Now if you will excuse me."

Francis stopped him with a palm flat against Cromwell's bony chest.

"Jesus, man," Cromwell growled. "I have broken men's arms for far less than that."

"I am in deep," Francis said quickly. "My gambling debts, they have been called in. Men are looking for me in the City. They could reach me here at court, make my death look like an accident. Make me a deal. You never turn down a deal. Help me."

"The interest will cost you 25% on the original amount. Accrues first of the month, every month. And you pay in coin, not in land, not in wheat or wool. Gold. Understand?"

"Daylight robbery," Francis gasped.

"No, more like usury," Cromwell corrected. "Take it—and go see my clerks. Or leave it—and take your chances with the men in the City." He nudged his fingers beneath Francis's emerald chain and snapped it off in a single fluid motion. "Payment towards past, present, and future services," he called over his shoulder.

"You prick," Francis shook his head.

The weight of smooth, cool jewels in hand calmed Cromwell somewhat as he made his way to the singular place he knew he could be alone. The oldest part of the rose garden had fallen into disrepair, and pansies and violets dotted the path. He'd been stealing away here for years and had never encountered another soul. He settled onto the rim of an ancient fountain and threaded Francis's chain through his hands like a rosary. Just go back into money, he told himself. Leave behind the Reformation and England, return to banking. Money is all you are good at.

A rustle in the bushes alerted Cromwell that he was not as alone as he thought. His heart raced and he braced himself for a possible fight. All it took was a rustle of fabric or a misplaced footstep, and he was sixteen again and fighting for his life. But the only intruder to emerge was a ragged mallard. He waddled out of the briar and quacked, probably just as upset at having his quiet disturbed as Cromwell. He reached into his pocket for his forgotten breakfast. He tossed a few pieces of ginger cake to the duck. Walter used to yell at him for feeding the birds, saying the birds ought to be feeding the Cromwells instead of the other way around.

The mallard nibbled everything Cromwell tossed to him. Soon, his mate shyly made her way onto the open path. Cromwell sprinkled more crumbs onto the gravel for her. I should get some ducks for my garden, he thought. Harr would probably chase them, though. At any rate, this family of ducks looked as though they could use more regular meals. He'd have to remember to bring bread with him. His new neighbors scattered back into the briar as the sound of ground crunching under heels neared.

"How did you find me?" he asked.

Elizabeth sank down breathlessly next to him. "I've seen you come here before, but since it is the only place where you are ever alone, I thought it best to leave it that way."

"At least until now." He buried his head in his hands. "What is she thinking? Does she not understand how precarious her position is? And what are you doing keeping another queen's secrets from me?"

"How was I to know? I do not speak German. Blame your own agents. I am there to serve the queen, not spy on her. But I will ask her to rethink her position."

"The queen is not the only one to keep secrets," he grumbled. Cromwell reached out and patted Elizabeth's rounding belly. "Dove, how long did you honestly think I would not notice?"

"These past few months," she said softly. "Just never seemed like there was a good time to tell you. How long have you known?"

"A while. How long have you known?"

"A while," she answered. They rested their weight against one another and breathed in the humid, earthy air. She pulled a biscuit from her pocket and crumbled it on the ground to coax the ducks back out. "I'm rounding out, while you are just skin and bones," she said lightly. "It would help if you ate your breakfast instead of scattering it to the birds."

"I suppose they have taken their toll, these latter days." He wiped his palms across his sunken cheeks.

"Thomas, tell me truthfully, are you moving against the queen?" Elizabeth fidgeted with her canary yellow sleeves.

"I want nothing to do with her one way or the other. I want to pretend the marriage never happened, for the beautiful piece of heartache it's turned out to be for everyone. I could hop the next boat across the channel and die a happy man." He straightened himself. "Why do you ask?"

"Because after you left, a new maid arrived, earmarked for the queen's chambers," Elizabeth murmured. "And she is very young, and very pretty."

VII.

An early, hot spring had turned everyone into fools in love. A courtier could not turn the corner without swooning. The fine weather and sweet flowers got women thinking of weddings and babies. And the fine cloth and sparing cuts of ladies' warm weather gowns got the gentlemen thinking about making those babies. Even the king had a new feather in his hat. He visited the queen's rooms more often, but Elizabeth suspected his interest had more to do with the new girl named Katherine. She had vaguely alluded to being a relation of sorts to Norfolk. But clearly not enough of a Howard to be anything except gape mouthed and dumbly polite to the last Seymour girl.

Elizabeth cut a path through the cool gardens, choosing her route depending on what side the shade was on. She'd lost track of time that afternoon, between making a list of fiancées for Gregory and dipping Harr's feet in the fountain. Now, she was late for Duke Phillip's fete. She picked up her pace, even though Cromwell fretted every time he saw so much as a dribble of sweat on her brow. The new baby in her had become his new mission. As she rounded the corner, she smacked into a stout man. Before she could make her apologies, pair of rough hands grabbed her face and planted a wet kiss on her lips.

"Ha!" he shouted. "They don't make them like that in France!"

Whatever others would say about Henry Howard, he knew how to make a lasting impression.

She made it into the great hall, just as the musicians struck up the note for the first dance. Her eyes scanned the room for Cromwell. He was just a little behind the throne, deep in conversation with the king, while Duke Phillip chattered in German with his cousin. The duke was as handsome a prince as any lady could hope for, with sparkling brown eyes and chestnut hair. Anne eagerly waved Elizabeth over to her.

"And this," Anne giggled. She had started to enjoy wine. She had started to enjoy being queen. "This is Lissie Cromwell. She has been a great help to me, helping me with my dresses and dancing and English. Phillip, see how fine her gown is? Her own design!" Anne said proudly. She was one of those rare women who could rejoice in another woman's radiance.

"Your Grace." Elizabeth curtsied. How could a woman not feel a little weak in the knees with a man such as that? She self-consciously smoothed her skirts. For that night, she'd chosen a Tudor green kirtle over a heavily embroidered underskirt of lilies.

"It would seem that Lord Cromwell's wife is just as ingenious as he," Phillip smiled. "I spent the afternoon with your husband. Never have I seen a country run so smoothly, with such prosperity. I will be bringing home some of his ideas to Bavaria." Phillip flashed her a dazzling smile. "You are a vision, my lady. But I think my own vision is failing, because I have been looking for the Princess Mary, and I do not see her."

"No woman wants to appear too eager," Anne laughed. She spoke in English for Elizabeth's sake. "Phillip, you must join the dancers and pursue her." Phillip held out his hand for Elizabeth. She could not keep the color out of her cheeks.

"Your Grace must excuse me, but I have a very jealous husband. Relations between England and Bavaria might never recover," Elizabeth explained.

"Ah, well in that case you are excused. I have always admired jealously as a mark of love," Phillip laughed off her refusal. They both knew she probably had business to conduct behind the throne. Before Elizabeth could discreetly sidle over to Cromwell, the new little maid, Katherine Howard, bounded over to her.

"Do I look well?" she asked eagerly. "I have never been to court dance before." Katherine twirled so Elizabeth could take in her gown, and what Elizabeth saw stunned her. The diaphanous fabric shifted from ivory to pale green. She grabbed the girl's elbow and led her into a corner.

"Katherine, where did you get a dress like this?" she demanded. The gown hung heavy with draped pearls across the bodice—so many that they tangled. Her underskirt moved stiffly under the load of crystals. "Did a man make you promise him something, so that you could have this dress."

"Oh, no!" Katherine giggled. "A lady gave it to me. Lady Hertford."

"Anne Stanhope just gave you a dress?" Elizabeth confirmed.

"Well, more your brother…he told me: be yourself. This is myself!" She twirled again for effect. Elizabeth caught her mid-spin. "Ouch! You are hurting me!"

Elizabeth just dug her nails in more to Katherine's spindly arms. "Listen: in this court, nothing is for free, nothing is done out of charity. If you need new gowns or patterns, you ask me, you ask Lady Rochford."

"You're just jealous!" Katherine spat. "Jealous I am younger than you, more slender, and my gown costs more!"

"For Christ's sake, Katherine!" Elizabeth shook the young girl. "All you have in this court is your name, your virtue." She released Katherine with a shove. "So don't go about selling your wares like a fisherman's wife." Elizabeth glanced around desperately for Cromwell, but he had faded back into the crowd. She passed behind the throne, but checked her step when she heard _Charles Brandon_ giving the king legal advice.

"However," Brandon said. "Even if these pre-contract matters can be passed over, the council is still of the opinion that Your Majesty's failure to consummate the marriage is itself sufficient grounds for divorce."

She shoved her knuckles between her lips to keep from crying out. It all made sense. A new mistress on the make, followed by a divorce, followed by a new marriage. Please, Thomas, Elizabeth prayed. Please have nothing to do with this. She scanned the room again for Cromwell, yet he had all but vanished. Instead, Elizabeth settled for cutting in front of Anne Stanhope as she paired off with Edward.

"I beg your—

"Anne, I need a word with Edward. Now." She elbowed Anne into the background. Edward looked up in surprise at his new dance partner.

"Ah, finally remembered you are a Seymour," he mused.

"Have you lost your senses?" she hissed.

"Years ago. Why do you ask?" But then the music started and the partners swirled around each other, only to pair off again with new couples. Elizabeth's trajectory brought her straight before the Earl of Surrey.

"I'm Lissie Seymour," she said as they touched palms. "You may remember me from earlier this afternoon when you tried to stick your tongue in my mouth."

"Darling, had I known you for both a Seymour and a Cromwell, it would have been a kiss with a fist." He scooped her up and passed her to her next partner, Sir Thomas Wyatt.

"Please spare me your mockery," she pleaded. He pressed his palms to hers a second longer than the beat.

"Why would I ridicule you? I take pity on you."

"Why?"

"Because you better than anyone know how this will all end," he said as he passed her on. Finally, she looped back to Edward.

"What in bleeding Christ do you think you are doing?" she spat.

"Giving the king what the king wants, which is every courtier's duty," Edward replied absently. "You might remind Cromwell about that."

Elizabeth missed a beat and fumbled back into place. She was not sure whether to be thankful or terrified that Cromwell had no idea Edward was pushing the Howard girl forward.

"Just watch, Edward," Elizabeth threatened. "You think you can play Cromwell's game better than he can? How many mistresses has he turned into queens? Just you wait. You and Suffolk are so smug, but you probably just handed Cromwell his next promotion." Fortunately, she spun away from the other dancers before Edward could retort.

Elizabeth circled the hall one last time, searching for Cromwell's black coat in a sea of black coats. She dashed up the stairs to the gallery above. At first, she saw only a few amorous couples as the heat coming off the candles bent the light. Then she spotted him at the far end of the gallery, a lone wolf watching the scene unfold below. His face was washed blank of its brutal determination; his mask was so neutral he almost seemed placid.

"Thomas?" she rested her hand on thick sleeve. She watched him watch Francis Bryan lead Katherine Howard away from the dance and towards the king's receiving chambers.

"Lady Mary and Duke Phillip seem to be getting on well. I stand corrected; the queen was right," he remarked. Then his shoulders sank forward."It's all over, finished before it began," he said numbly. "The king is ripe for a new favorite. God knows I've learned the hard way."

"We must do something. I could warn the queen. You could—"

"I'm tired," he said, more to himself than anyone else. "I am so tired. I am too old to be chasing after shadows on the wall. This is no life for us, no life for our children." He turned to face her; in the warm candlelight he could be mistaken for gentility, no sordid past, just a quiet, prosperous man. "We could leave this place easily enough. I have been saving money abroad."

"We cannot just sit back and allow Edward to—"

"Let him. Let Edward mix himself up with Brandon and Gardiner. I'm honestly not among the ones that give a damn anymore."

Elizabeth shivered and stepped away from him. Cromwell really believed he had nothing left to lose, which meant he was capable of anything.

"Let us to bed," she said gently.

"No," he shook his head. "No, I want to stay and see how long that girl is alone with the king. Jesus Christ, she's only a fucking child," he swore under his breath.

Elizabeth kept the vigil with him. She counted three full dance sets—which in her mind amounted to ten minutes—before Katherine trotted out of the king's presence chamber. Maybe the girl would set the king's heart alight, maybe she would be one of several, but the hunt for the queen's place had begun. The king returned to his guests, laughing and jostling elbows with Francis Bryan.

"A toast! A toast!" Henry called. The king staggered forward as his bad leg dragged behind him. A page rushed forth to hand Henry a full glass of wine. "To the friendship between England and Bavaria. To the growing ties between England and the Protestant League." He slurped his wine so loudly Elizabeth could hear it from the gallery above. "And to the health of the queen, who has brought with her such tranquility and prosperity to this realm!"

The entire court applauded and blew kisses to the still unkissed queen. Cromwell shook his head and narrowed his eyes.

"He's still wet from fucking the Howard chit, and drinks a toast to his wife," he snarled.

Henry held up his hands to quiet the crowd. He bared his full lips into a smile; he was the center of attention, the center of everyone's world. He drained his glass again and held it out for a refill. Elizabeth felt as though she were watching a play, a mimicry of real life, for this was the purest artifice she had ever seen.

"But England would not be where she is today," Henry continued. "Without the efforts of one man, the most loyal, faithful, dedicated servant—"

"If he says 'Charles Brandon', I'm going to throw up," Cromwell muttered.

"A most impressive man, a man made for these complicated times," Henry went on. "Lord Thomas Cromwell single handedly forged this most prosperous and satisfying alliance with Cleves—despite some of your reservations." Henry laughed a little and nodded to indicate he expected everyone to laugh when he did. "Which is why, on this night, in front our distinguished guest, I announce my intention to fill make Mr. Cromwell the next Earl of Essex!" The king's bright reptile eyes flicked up to the gallery and locked on Cromwell. "A toast to you, Tom! Are you not yet happy? Are you not satisfied? The king of England is drinking a toast to you!" Henry shouted.

A drop of sweat leaked down Cromwell's forehead and dripped from his nose onto the railing. Cromwell squeezed his eyes shut like a child trying to wish the world away. In an instant, he recovered and bowed deeply towards the king. Elizabeth froze as the king stared them down. The second of silence disappeared when Henry began to laugh, low and rolling at first, but increasingly shrill. He waved his arms around and around.

"Dance! All of you, dance!"

"That, that was in jest, wasn't it?" Elizabeth said uncertainly. Cromwell's hands trembled, and she reached out to still them, but he shoved his fingers into his vest. He swiveled on his heel away from her.

"I will see you later tonight," he said without looking back.

Elizabeth did not step away from the railing until she contained her short, panicky breaths. Their world had just spun round like a dradle. She wanted to cry out. She wanted her mother, her sister. She wanted to huddle with Harr and squeeze his stout body to hers, hide until these strange days passed them by.

Cromwell did not believe in churches, but if he had to build one, he would choose this dilapidated garden. The flowers peeking through the gravelly path hinted at grace in the lowest of places. The air smelled of earth and sky. And his friends, those damn ducks, were forward and gentle. He liked to think they recognized him, and not just because he brought them bread and nuts.

"Hope you both have enjoyed the party as much as I have," he told them as he sprinkled some pastry crust on the ground. His hands shook as he pulled a flask of brandy from his vest. "Now don't run and tell my wife about this." He studied his fingers as they gripped the flask. They used to tremble when he young, when he knew Walter was heading for his sisters, when Il Capitano told him he would meet the Spanish in battle the next morning-so he had better pray, drink, and whore.

The king was slipping into madness, yet he had known that for years. Daffy or not, Henry would want a return on his investment. He would make Cromwell earn every acreage of that earldom, and Cromwell had a fair idea of what the king wanted in kind. Perhaps he will let me retire to the country, Cromwell thought. Why should I care which queen's ass occupies the throne? He groaned aloud and dropped his head against his knees. Because I would rather gouge out my eyes than see that bony slut sit in the same place as Catherine of Aragon and Anne Boleyn, he answered himself.

His ears pricked up when he heard a distinctive gait ambling down the path. First a thud, followed by a drag. Cromwell waited a few seconds for the stench of decaying flesh to hit his nostrils. He tucked his flask back into his vest and bowed politely.

"Your Majesty."

"So this is where you go when I cannot find you. You know how I detest when you are not where I need you to be," Henry sniffed. His pale eyes shone bright as stars in the midnight hour.

"Your Majesty, I cannot accept your generous grant. I am too poor, too wretched a creature," Cromwell said while still bowed.

"You are what I tell you to be," Henry said simply.

"Your Majesty, I beg you. You have enriched me enough. I seek no further—"

"I know about the inquiries you have been making abroad. I know you have been looking into land in Basel and Zurich." Henry regarded Cromwell for a heavy moment. "Nobody leaves me, Tom. Nobody."

VIII.

"Well, I would call tonight a resounding success," Brandon congratulated himself.

"What! Because the king finger-fucked some Howard slut?" Edward spat. He rubbed his temples. "Oh, and brilliant, brilliant choice, Sir Francis," he sneered.

Francis wandered around Brandon's receiving chamber, inspecting every object that appeared remotely expensive. He threw back his doublet and placed his hand over his heart.

"You asked me to find a girl to stiffen the king's prick, so I found a girl to stiffen the king's prick." He glared at Edward with his one eye. "And he did not fiddle her cunny. But you do not want to know where she put that ruby ring. If you go to kiss the king's hand…well just don't kiss the ruby ring. Unless of course you enjoy a woman's oyster. It's an acquired taste—"

"You put the niece of Thomas Howard, of Henry Howard, right in front of the king!" Edward burst out. "You think the Seymours will stand for another Howard ascendancy?"

"Gentlemen, keep your voices down. My wife is asleep in the next room," Brandon warned. Edward sank back in his chair.

"Tell me this, Your Grace," Edward kept his voice low and measured. "Why should I help you? Let Cromwell scribble around with his paperwork, let the king box his ears. What difference is it to me?"

"Because Prince Edward has too many uncles. That is why," Brandon said simply. He watched Edward's face absorb the simplicity, the severity of that fact. "If Cromwell lives to see that boy crowned, rest assured that you will not be Lord Protector." Brandon turned his attention to Francis, who had made himself scarce in a corner of books Brandon never read. "And you, Sir Francis, you will never claw your way out of debt from Cromwell. Perhaps you both frequent the same preachers, perhaps you read the same books. But he will hound you until your death for every penny you owe him. If we can ensnare him on treason, the Crown will confiscate all his belongings, and your debts would be wiped clean."

"Well, I do not want to put a Howard girl forward," Edward insisted.

"It is a little late to change ships," Francis said. "And I thought she was a more…distant relation of Norfolk and Surrey."

"Is she at least a virgin?" Edward sighed.

"She took the king's signet ring and shoved it up her slit. What do you think?"

"Charles?" Catherine Brandon peered beyond the door, dressed only in her nightgown. "I couldn't sleep who is there with you?" Edward and Francis pulled away from the candlelight.

"No one," Brandon said quickly. Then he added: "Go back to bed." Catherine took another step forward. Brandon placed himself between her and their midnight visitors.

"Shall I come to you later?" he asked softly.

"If you would still be my sweet Charles," she sighed. She turned to leave, but Brandon caught her delicate arm.

"I am as good as I may be," he said firmly. "And you must take me as I am."

She studied his face, as if she recalled him from some place, some time, but could not exactly remember.

"I love you, Catherine," he said. She backed away without another word. It was the first time she did not reply, "I love you, too."


	25. Chapter 25

**Jolena: Henry is the real villain in this story. He's cruel, capricious, and now Cromwell must face the monster he helped make. You're right that Cromwell and Lissie's marriage has faced nothing but headwinds. Yet some people may never get a break…**

** Ursula-Este: I am so glad to hear an update is squeal inducing! I am sorry to make you like Catherine Brandon, but I think she's starting to find her own mind, her own voice, and stop listening to her tool of a husband. Henry is the real bad guy in the story, even though the whole male cast does not come off well in this story. **

** Dork of York: Oh yes, Lissie pulled a "Talk to the Hand." My goal was for her to become tough, without becoming hard. You're right that Cromwell is still scarred by the fall of Anne Boleyn and in the five stages of grief, he's at the bargaining phase:*help me out of this Cleves train-wreck and I will make your daughter queen and then we'll let bygones be bygones about me engineering your execution.* If only Cromwell could treat other people as well as he treats animals and small children… **

**Oh, and we will begin to see the seeds of a less b*** Anne Stanhope. **

** Nata: I agree Cromwell has had a life full of tragedy. I want him to catch a break, but he is so damn self-destructive.**

** IronPen: Brandon is up to his usual tricks, meaning he moves against anyone who is closer to the king than he. It's no secret, but I never liked Charles Brandon either in history or in the show.**

** Pandora: Oh yeah, Lissie got "Surried." Catherine Brandon on the show always annoyed me—totally passive aggressive and boring costumes. But I think I will follow history more closely with her character. As her marriage disintegrates, she will become a more outspoken Protestant.**

** Boleyn Girl: You are right that Cromwell can never shake the ghost of Anne Boleyn. Historically, I think he refused to speak of her. But in my story, she's almost become a sort of muse for him.**

**Oh, and the song that weaves through this chapter is the lovely, haunting, hypnotic, "Wash Away," by Matt Costa.**

Her heels clattered against the floor-boards no matter how carefully she placed her feet. The door (disguised as a bookshelf) groaned to reveal half a dozen of London's most prominent wives, their faces relaxed and eyes intent. A young woman paced at the front of the room, preacher to a mismatched flock. Half of the sermon seemed prepared, the other half fell out of her mouth with a frenzy and sting.

I am through with being afraid, she told herself. Scared of her king. Scared of her husband. Scared of the fever burning up her heart. Thankfully, Catherine Parr waved her over and made a place for her to sit.

"It gives me such gladness to see you here," Cate whispered.

She merely nodded and squeezed Cate's hand. A more incongruent gathering could barely be imagined if someone had placed the names of each lady of the realm in a hat and drawn them at random. Jane Boleyn tucked herself into one of the dimmer corners, so her cool reptile eyes flicked back and forth in the dark. Anne Stanhope had boldly chosen a seat front and center, but her small mouth—always ready to dribble a little poison—remained shut. Her brown eyes fixed on the woman in front of them. They said her name was Anne Askew, she was a Bible woman, and she would preach the Gospels in English to anyone who had ears to listen.

"The words tell us that God made man!" Anne Askew thumped her own worn Tyndale volume. "And they want you to believe that priests can make a man from a wafer! Next they will want you to believe that man can make God, just because they tell you so!"

A few of the women gasped at the blasphemy, but Anne paused only long enough to push her wheaten hair out of her eyes and take a sip of water. She could be pretty, if her face were not so flushed with passion. Some called her, "The Fair Gospeler."

"She left her husband. Or he threw her out," Cate explained. Come to think of it, every woman in that room was, or had been, in a bad marriage. She hoped something a little more substantial than matronly disappointment united them.

"Is she in Lord Cromwell's keeping?" she asked.

"Hard to say," Cate shrugged. She lowered her voice and her eyes when Anne frowned at the chatter. "For the time being, we are all in Lord Cromwell's keeping, until milder winds blow," she murmured.

"The King has let idolaters, papists tug his ear and turn him away from the true word of God," Anne Askew continued fiercely. "But praise to Jesus, for sending us a German princess, a kindly, virtuous woman to lead England back to salvation. For salvation is within us all, no matter the depths of our secrets, the dark in our hearts. Faith—not the clink of coin in collection plates-but faith alone saves our souls." Anne's voice boomed as if she did not care who heard her—God, the Devil, or the cook. "Let us give thanks for gentle Anne of Cleves. Let us gives thanks to John Tyndale, who gave his life so we might have the true word of God! And let us give thanks to Jesus Christ, who will forgive us our sins!"

I have so many sins, she thought. There is still innocent blood on my hands.

"Let us say, Hallelujah! That we may be saved through the strength of our faith, whatever lies in our past!" Anne proclaimed. In that room, they were all women with histories to live down.

She covered her heart with her hands and whispered the words, timid to be heard. She repeated, Hallelujah, Hallelujah. Then her voice found itself and strengthened.

"Hallelujah, Hallelujah," Catherine Brandon said.

II.

"They're ready for you, Tom." Richard Rich swerved around the carved oak door. Cromwell pulled his chair close to the fire, even though it was well into April. He stared up at Rich with vacant eyes.

"The king's will be done," he mumbled. "Is Surrey in attendance?"

"No," Rich replied. "Not because he is slighting you, but because he is sleeping off last night's excesses. For what it is worth, he had his pants around his ankles, bare assed in the stool closet when someone ran to tell him the king made you Earl of Essex. He is said to have remarked, 'well at least I am sitting in the right chair.'"

Cromwell smiled wanly. This was Job's comfort indeed. He heaved himself from his chair, slowed by the heavy scarlet and ermine cloak. Rich caught his arm.

"Today is a victory, for you. For our faction. You are to be raised very high."

"All the further to fall," he replied bleakly.

Actually, the situation was not utterly lost: Tom Seymour and Francis Bryan had to carry the train of his ermine trimmed cloak. A herald bustled in front of them, shouting down the length of Westminster: "Make way! Make way for Lord Thomas Cromwell!"

Finally, Henry came into view, encircled by Charles Brandon and Edward Seymour. All the men wore the marks of peerage: scarlet cloaks and ermine mantles. Their coronets boasted pearls the size of robins' eggs. The king held his arms out for Cromwell as if they were dear, long parted friends.

"This is a long time in coming," Henry said. He sounded almost sincere. Cromwell mouthed "thank you" and plummeted to his knees.

"It is the king's pleasure," Secretary Risely read. "By this patent, to confer on Baron Thomas Cromwell the noble title 'Earl of Essex' and upon his heirs. And also by this patent to grant him lands worth 50,000 pounds a year, so that he may maintain the style and dignity of his office."

Brandon made a little strangled sound in the back of his throat, but Edward stared at some undefined point in the distance. The king limped towards Cromwell, so close his stinking leg almost brushed Cromwell's face. He offered Cromwell his hands, and Cromwell reluctantly placed his fingertips in the king's icy palm. He could not remember the last time he actually touched the royal hand. Cromwell supposed he might have received a warmer embrace from a rock or a corpse.

Henry pulled Cromwell to standing and waved over the page holding the coronet. The king held it over Cromwell's head for an eternal moment before resting it on his black curls. The coronet of an earl sat on an ermine rim, and its red velvet was encircled by a pattern of gold strawberry leaves and giant pearls. Cromwell had no idea it would be so heavy. He felt as though he were shrinking, compressing under the weight of it all: the cloak, the coronet.

"The patent of your nobility." Henry handed Cromwell the scroll.

"Thank you, Your Majesty," Cromwell whispered.

"And now," Henry bellowed to everyone. "Let us to dinner, to celebrate the elevation of our most entirely beloved Cromwell!"

Brandon hung back, desperately scanning the blank faces. His insides were screaming. Did not everyone think that the scene they had just witnessed disturbingly resembled a coronation? Instead, Edward brushed passed him without an upwards glance. He paused and looked over his shoulder and shrugged beneath his ermine mantle. Apparently, Edward could live in a world where Thomas Cromwells could be vaulted from the stableyard into the peerage. Wise men told Brandon that change was the only constancy, but they read books. And who needed those?

As if Edward's indifference was not enough, he was actually _polite_ to his brother-in-law as the privy council sat down to dine.

"Do tell us, my Lord Essex," Edward said as he broke off a pheasant leg. "How goes your Bible project?"

Cromwell smiled for the first time that day. "We have printed 3,000 texts in English. By the end of the month, we shall have enough for every parish in England."

"And what good will that do you, Mr. Cromwell, when most of the peasants cannot read," Brandon snorted.

"We could teach them," Cromwell said solemnly.

"Teach them?" Brandon snorted.

"Yes, Your Grace," Edward spoke up. "Just what about that proposition do you find ridiculous?"

The hairs on the back of Brandon's neck stood up, like a dog readying to fight. "I am surprised to hear my Lord Hertford take such a radical position."

"I am not among those who are afraid to let men think and ponder what they will," Cromwell said.

"Well, I will be sure to pass your sentiments on to the bishops you recently had arrested," Brandon sniped.

"My lords, gentlemen, please." Henry held up a regal palm. "If I desired this pettiness, I would make a place for myself among the ladies. Ah! Here is the main course."

Cromwell was alabaster at best, but when he saw the fowl served, he managed to turn a whiter shade of pale. Front and center, trussed up for royalty, was his friend. The mallard from the briar. He gripped the underside of the table. Oh Jesus, what about his mate? What if they have chicks? Cromwell wanted to sprint to the garden and scoop them up, protect them. Oh Christ, he wondered. What if they are for the next course?

"Lord Essex," Henry said slowly. "Duck stuffed with capon stuffed with dove. I had my cooks make it especially for you." The cooks had saved the skin of the duck, brilliant feathers and all, and remolded it over the roasted birds. The servers brought it to Henry first, who waved it over to Cromwell.

"I am sorry, Your Majesty, I…I…duck does not agree with me," Cromwell stammered.

"You deny a dish sent to you from the king's table?" Henry grit his teeth. He snapped his fingers at the servers. "Carve up a big slice of the inner birds for our Lord Essex. And leave the duck on his table, in case he changes his mind." Henry's lips thinned into a smile but his eyes hardened. "I insist, my lord, that you try the main dish."

Cromwell stared down at the hunk of meat dished onto his plate. He grabbed his knife and took a deep breath. He sawed off a piece of the dove and forced it into his mouth. It felt like chewing the jelly from horse hooves. He washed it down with a large sip of wine. Henry tsk-tsked.

"You are much, much too thin, my lord," Henry laughed. "You make us all look plump. I insist you finish the entire thing."

Cromwell supposed it was not the first time he had devoured one of his friends. Probably not the last time, either. Later, some of the pages would gossip the indefatigable Thomas Cromwell was seen under a full moon, on his hands and knees, clutching his side, and retching onto the finely sculpted green.

III.

Elizabeth pushed the door open to Cromwell's study without knocking. She had given that up long ago; they had no secrets left between them. He'd pulled his chair close to the fire and wrapped his ermine mantle tightly around him. His coronet slumped down over his thick brows. He nodded to her and lifted his glass.

"My lady. My countess," he hiccupped.

"Thomas, you're drunk," she said flatly.

"And on my way to getting drunker still."

"Try not to drink alone. It is a good way to ruin a reputation." She eased the coronet off his head, just in case it accidentally slipped into the fireplace. She hugged it to her growing belly.

"And I have _such _a virtuous name to protect. Let me see…first there was Wolsey…oh but he's dead. Then there was Saint More. But-" Cromwell made a cutting motion across his throat. "And then Catherine of Aragon…dead too. Of the cold, or of poison. I could never be sure."

"Stop it, Thomas. You are drunk. Let me help you to bed." She kept her voice low, but sharp.

"No, no. Do not stop me in the middle of my tally. And then Will Brereton. Henry Norris. George Boleyn. His lovely sister Anne." Cromwell made a chopping motion in the air at each name. "Oh, and half of about every village north of Doncaster." He poured himself another glass of wine. "If you ever lose me in a crowd, just follow the trail of dead."

"You're scaring me, Thomas," Elizabeth said quietly. She pulled away the wine skein that he had tucked tightly under his elbow. She moved for his glass, but he clutched it to his chest.

"Christ's blood," he swore. "How did you end up with me for a husband? How did I end up like this? Some days I think I am no better than my father." He drained the last of his wine. His eyes searched the crackling fire for an answer.

"Thomas," she began. She'd never heard him speak like this. Then again, she had never seen him this drunk. She placed her palm on Cromwell's knee. He barely noticed.

"Years and years later, when I returned and set up as a lawyer, I saw Walter in the stocks and pillories at Cheapside. He looked at me, I looked at him, and then I continued on my way. And that was that."

She leaned her cheek against his knee, and he absently caressed her hair.

"I've never breathed a word of any of that to a single soul. Not even my first wife. I don't know why I tell you now."

"Let me help you to bed."

A protest began and died on his lips. Sighing, he passed her his cup and slid from his chair. Elizabeth followed behind to carry the train of cloak; she could not bear to see the ermine drag across the floor. She smiled to herself: maybe the girl who had peacocked around Christmas court in a leopard stole was not gone after all.

She observed Cromwell from her unique angle. With his slouched shoulders under an ermine mantle, he looked as though he could be any king in any realm: the loneliest, most weighted man around. She pulled the cloak from him and made for his doublet but he waved her off.

"I am not a child, just drunk," he insisted. He fell back against their bed with a thud. "How is Harr?"

"Asleep. But he won't stay that way if you keep stumbling about like a lame bear." She yanked his boots off. As she cradled his knees and pushed his legs under the sheets, she added: "We might yet leave. We could roll up those quilts that I sewed coins in, the money from my Northern lands. We could leave with just that and be content. As long as we had each other…"

"He _knows_, Lissie," Cromwell shook his head. "The king knew we might run. And he made it clear I would never leave his service untifl…"

"The king will not wait much longer for you to give him what he wants," Elizabeth warned. "Give him the Howard girl. Send the queen to Cleves, to the country. God knows I adore the her—she is a poultice to the rot in this court—but why make yourself a martyr over her?"

"Because this is not just about a doe eyed queen!" Cromwell snapped. "This is about the Commonwealth, this is about the fathers who will not be able to feed their families when the price of food shoots up because England has been cut out of the trade routes! This is about the merchants that will go bankrupt because they will lose access to the German markets!" He pounded his pillow into submission. "And what is wrong with the queen at any rate? Why does she displease him? Why can she not fuck the king and get it over with?"

"I think we both know there is more to it than that," Elizabeth challenged. "Must it always be her fault?" She shut the bed curtains and climbed beneath the sheets. The glowing fireplace cast their shadows against the thin, silk curtains.

Cromwell rolled towards her. He arched a single, mischievous eyebrow. "I don't believe I have ever had that problem with you," he teased. Oh, God he must be drunk, Elizabeth thought, to bat his lashes and attempt to flirt. He smoothed his hands over her figure, tracing the orbit of her belly and hips. "I think we will have a summer baby," he remarked softly.

"I turned a little fat," Elizabeth admitted. She had lost the queasiness months ago and her appetite had become her master. The cooks were more than a little familiar with her. Fortunately, since she plumped up all over, her belly did not draw much attention.

"I think you are radiant," Cromwell said tenderly. His eyes softened and lightened. He'd meant what he'd said. Elizabeth sighed and kissed each of his heavy brows. At the puff of his breath on the nape of her neck, she hitched up her nightgown. His elegant fingers stalled over her navel before sliding between the thick furs of her thighs. Elizabeth turned on her side as he entered her from behind. She watched their shadows thrown up against the sheer, summer bed curtains.

Who were the characters in this shadow play? There was the child-bride come down from Yorkshire. There was the black furred monster, who trapped her in a room on the night that queens were to die. There was the woman who had bled out her baby all over the church floor. And there was the man who had fallen asleep against her belly, speaking Italian and French to life inside her. All the characters merged, and Elizabeth could not say where one ended and the other began when Cromwell was inside her, and their hands and feet entwined. After he shuddered against her, she twisted her head towards him, pressing her nose to his.

"I love you," she murmured into his flesh. But, he was already half asleep.

Late the next morning, Elizabeth had Harr in her lap, while they sat in the garden. Early blooming lilacs weighted the humid air with their perfume. She spread Harr's stubby fingers across a piece of paper and traced around them with drafting chalk. He giggled at the sensation.

"See?" she said. "It does not look like much, but put a beak here and some eyes here, and what do you have?" She filled in the open spaces.

"Ooh! A bird!" Harr cried.

"That's right sweetheart." She kissed the top of his head. "You are going to be just as keen as your father. If we fill in with blue and green, it will look like a peacock. They are the most beautiful birds, but cruel." She glanced up from Harr's curls at a ruckus fast approaching. Cromwell breezed into the garden with Ralph Sadler on his heels. Ralph struggled under the bulk of a crate, which shifted and…squawked?

"Thomas, I think that crate is quacking."

"Well of course it is," Cromwell huffed. "There are ducks in there." He pointed to where Ralph could set down the crate.

"Oh, right. That just explains _everything_," Elizabeth said drily. She searched his face for any sign he remembered the things he said and did the night before. Cromwell's jaw tensed as he set about prying open the crate. He seemed as steely and determined as any other normal day. But these were strange days.

"Out you go, love," Cromwell coaxed the bird. She peered out uncertainly before waddling forward. She smacked her beak at the chicks behind her, and they scampered forward. Harr clapped his hands in delight, and lurched at them. Cromwell caught the collar of his smock, sweeping him into his arms.

"Oh, no you don't, little man," he admonished. "They are new here, and they won't know if you mean them harm. Give them a chance to get to know us all." Harr watched the mother duck lead her chicks around and waved at them.

"We should construct a ramp, so they can get to the fountain and paddle around," Cromwell said, more to himself than anyone else.

The ducks nibbled and rooted around the green. Elizabeth groaned, shoving aside the rough drawing she had made with Harr. Sometimes Cromwell had a brilliant idea. But other times, his plans would only shit all over everything in time.

IV.

Two days before May Day, the king loudly hinted that he would appreciate a masque from the queen's ladies. The Master of Revels, John Farnley, tossed some silks and feathers at Elizabeth and told her to make do as she will.

"What performance?" she asked him.

"We already have the fortress from other sets. Just have some knights rescue some maidens," he shrugged.

"Do I look as though I am in the maidenly condition?" Elizabeth pointed to her belly.

"Ah, well, stand behind a prop," Farnley laughed. His face tightened, and he stepped towards her seat. Overhead, the notes of the queen's music lesson distracted their conversation. "I know you and Jane Boleyn have the most experience and are the best dancers of the lot. But…His Majesty wills that Mistress Katherine Howard have the lead role."

Elizabeth's full lips mashed shut. The king's will was supposed to be God's will. They must be the merriest couple, she thought. To coincidentally agree so often.

"I am picking up what you leave behind," she said carefully. Farnley nodded in understanding.

"Someone ought to tell the queen what is going on, for Christ's love," he said.

Later that morning, Katherine planted herself firmly next to Elizabeth as she sorted through the costumes. Elizabeth wanted to shake Katherine Howard loose, in the same way many men promised themselves they would never drink again. But Katherine trailed after her like a lost puppy. Elizabeth would make a study of obliviousness, but she would peer through her thick lashes to find Katherine watching every move she made, mirroring every manner, gaping at every jewel or unique dress cut.

"Such a pretty skirt," she cooed.

"These are a few years old," Elizabeth grumbled. "From when my sister was queen."

"No, I meant your skirts," Katherine said determinedly. "You dress differently than the other ladies."

"I dress to please myself." Elizabeth glanced over her stomacher to remember what she had actually put on that morning. A sky blue skirt under amber-orange velvet.

"The other ladies all dress the same. Not you." Katherine slouched against the wall. "My mother hated to be noticed. I don't know why. A girl is as good as dead if no one else notices her."

"There are worse fates than being invisible." Elizabeth ferreted out all the ostrich feathers she could. Katherine took it upon herself to help Elizabeth. "Should you not attend the queen?" she muttered.

"She is practicing her harpsichord. And I don't know anything about music."

"Surely your mother, your governess taught you how to pluck a lute, how to sing in tune?"

"My mother died when I was young. I never had a governess. My grandmother took me in, tried to take care of me the best she knew how." Katherine examined a peacock feather and tucked it in her hair.

"But what of your father?" Elizabeth asked, suddenly interested.

"He was the youngest. Inherited little except the Howard name. And he almost gambled that away, too. He knew nothing of children. So, he passed me on to the Dowager Duchess. I used to dream that my real family was a band of pirates, and one day they would sail up to Lambeth and—"

"What was your father's name?" Elizabeth hated to cut in on reminiscing, but business was business—as Cromwell never failed to remind her.

"Edmund Howard," Katherine said simply. "So anyway, I would dream my real family would come for me, and I would marry a pirate prince and have lots of children—"

"Lord Surrey is your uncle?" Elizabeth clarified.

"Of course. My father was his youngest brother." Katherine straightened a little. "I am not a bastard," she said stiffly.

At that moment, Elizabeth knew there was a God, and God had a sense of humor, because Edward Seymour was trying to make Anne Boleyn's cousin queen of England.

"Lady Rochford says you married very young, and got very rich off it. Now you are married to the Lord Privy Seal. My uncle says he is the most powerful man in England," Katherine continued. "So lucky."

"I would not be in any hurry to marry any man at your age, not matter how rich," Elizabeth replied coolly. At that moment, the clunky music in the background stopped. She heard a sniffle and then a door shut.

"The queen is very pious, to go to her closet to pray all the time," Katherine remarked. She compared a few sets of ribbons together.

"That is what queens do when they want to be alone," Elizabeth corrected. Or at least when they needed to cry in peace.

"Fancy shutting yourself away, when you could be out here? Trying on gowns, gossiping, dancing. I don't suppose you have dancing in your own rooms? Someone told me you have the biggest apartments, with your own gardens, and—"

"Listen," Elizabeth cut her off. "Lord Cromwell is not the dancing sort." She looked Katherine up and down, searching her pink, young face for anything resembling comprehension. Well, even Hans Holbein has to start with a blank canvas, Elizabeth thought. "Well, Mistress Howard, it seems you are to have the lead part tonight. How would it suit you to play Persephone to Francis Bryan's Hades?"

"Who is Persephone?" Katherine shrugged.

A blank canvas indeed, Elizabeth noted.

By dusk, Elizabeth was shooing the ladies of the queen's household towards the great hall. She reminded herself of that God damn duck that Cromwell had brought home, shuffling her chicks into a semblance of order. She gave a tug here and nip there as she straightened the women's costume: pearl encrusted bodices with black skirts. Katherine kept tugging her bodice down to plump her meager cleavage, and Elizabeth dutifully yanked it back up to her collar bone. As lead dancer, Katherine's skirt had been sewn entirely from black ostrich feathers: lighter than nothing.

"What if I forget the steps?" Katherine whined.

"Just remember, when the gold and silver confetti releases, you are supposed to cower and look sad because you are longing for your mother's light and warmth—not the Lord of the Underworld's cold jewels," Elizabeth reminded her. She felt a twinge of guilt at trussing up the queen's rival for the pleasure of the king, but if Henry was of a mind to put aside Anne of Cleves, then Elizabeth would risk damnation to keep her family safe from the king's ire.

The musicians struck up the first chord, and the ladies hurried out, pretending to search for their lost Maiden of Spring. Elizabeth was just about to step forward with her lute for her solo when Francis Bryan caught her elbow.

"I do not understand why I am made to play the villain again," he complained. "First I am the Turkish pirate, now I am Lord of Death?"

"So stop playing the part so well," Elizabeth sneered. She moved past him, but he caught her.

"What happened to you, Lissie? You used to be fun."

"I grew up, that is what happened," she said as she breezed past him. She took care to hold the lute a little lower than she normally would to shield her stomach from gossip and speculation. Elizabeth did not often sing or play in public, but everyone once in a while, a few chords floated through head; and she could sing deeply and in tune, so she imagined that was enough when the court was already half drunk.

"_Oh, float down stream, rivers of dreams. Float down stream, catch your wings_." As Elizabeth played, she watched out of the corner of her eye that Katherine not miss her cue. Persephone was supposed to rush around the garden, looking for a live flower where there was none. Katherine pattered out a beat late.

"_Heaven's flight, so you fly. Catch your dreams in the sky_." Elizabeth paused a beat to cue the gold and silver shavings to rain down. The court gasped and applauded as a small fortune fluttered like snowflakes through the hall. Elizabeth struck the next chord, so Katherine would know to whimper and hug herself. But, as the precious confetti rained on her, Katherine did something quite different. She threw open her long, thin arms and twirled, chin up and eyes closed in revelry. She twirled, and twirled. With each turn, her feather skirt caught more air, and soon it floated above her thighs. She whirled until the skirt flew high enough to reveal the crescent moon curve of a young girl's bottom.

Instead of Persephone shrinking from the cold wealth of the Underworld, Katherine Howard spun and threw her arms out. She ran her arms over her neck, smearing the flakes of gold and silver until she positively glowed. By then Elizabeth had long stopped playing and just stared as gape faced as any country bumpkin. But the king clapped and laughed. Clapped and laughed. He lost himself in his throaty chortle, so much that he did not so much as glance as Anne popped out of her chair like a wind-up child's toy. Elizabeth moved to follow the queen, but Francis minutely shook his head. She saw Cromwell's black outline trail after the queen, and she hoped that no one else saw it too. If the king got wind that Cromwell had taken the side of the wife instead of the mistress, Henry would box his ears 'til Christmastide.

Afterwards, Henry Howard ambled over to Charles Brandon. "Don't blame me, Your Grace," he said in his craggy voice, defiantly Northern. "Her father—my brother Edmund—was the same way."

"At least the king is amused," Brandon shrugged.

"Howard women!" Surrey laughed. "Always tough bitches to keep on the leash." But his tone dropped into seriousness. "Do you know how many nieces, nephews, distant kinsmen I have? Because I do not. But my table of descent is not so muddled that I do not remember cousins of mine who have been queen, and died on account of it."

"I thought, Lord Surrey, you would be pleased to see another Howard take the king's eye." Brandon slugged his wine back. Surrey nudged Brandon on his broad chest. His sad poet eyes scanned the room until they rested on Edward Seymour.

"Now they're a pair of mean creatures, Seymour and Cromwell, I mean," Surrey observed. "And I do not just mean their birth." He patted Brandon's chest. "You debase yourself and the honor of your name, your father's name, when you stoop so low as to meddle with men who only know how to advance themselves by killing off queens." He turned to leave. "Do you know how far my family stretches back? Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey, does not promote himself as a pimp of his kinswomen."

"What are you telling me?" Brandon turned to face Surrey.

"That you will tread the path you have made alone. You, Seymour, Gardiner can whisper in each other's ears all you like." Surrey threw his head back and laughed. "What good is Cromwell dead? How else would I get my beef and venison during Lent?"

V.

Not a word passed between Elizabeth and Cromwell as they sat in his study. She fiddled with the melody she had played that evening. He answered his dispatches.

"My playing isn't bothering you?" she asked after a while.

"Actually, I think it is the only thing keeping me sane." He burrowed down into his fur robe.

"The Howard girl's performance was not my idea."

"I know it."

"Was the queen upset?"

"She asked to see her ambassador. And then she asked me for help." Cromwell drummed his fingers against the arm rest.

"The king will be wanting a divorce soon."

"Most likely." Cromwell sounded…not indifferent, just defeated. "Kit left for Antwerp this morning.

Elizabeth hit the wrong note and cringed. "She….she left?"

"Repeating it does not change it." Cromwell buried himself back in his dispatches. "She said it had gotten too hot in England for her. Perhaps…perhaps you might join her there…at least until things are more certain for us."

Elizabeth cycled the thought through her head. She could take Harr, and sleep soundly through the night, knowing that the Captain of the Guard would not pound on her door in the middle of the night. But the thought of bearing Cromwell's child on foreign shores gave her pause. If she left, their little family would only exist in the weather-stained letters they exchanged.

"No," she said slowly. Later, she would never be sure if her decision was brave, foolish, or in between. "No. We are a family. We will face the storm together, with our backs to the wind."

Cromwell nodded, as if she had just given him the answer he had secretly hoped for. He talked while he wrote: "I was thinking I might marry Gregory off this summer." Cromwell searched her face, waiting for a twitch to betray her. But she had no clue what response he wanted. "The Marchioness of Dorset has a daughter, almost eighteen."

"They are an old family, a good name…" Elizabeth trailed off. She meant to say it was a good name to hide behind.

"You are not enthused?" Cromwell hinted. He held her eyes in his own dark pools. His staring contest was cut short by Harr wailing at the top of lungs in the next room. His cries slid into a full scream.

"He probably just needs to be held. I'll take care of him." Elizabeth eased herself from her seat.

"No, he's too heavy for you to be lugging about in your condition; I'll see to him." Cromwell dotted the last "i" and crossed the final "t".

In the end, they both went to the nursery. The room was warm and brightly lit, but Harr held his fists to his eyes and struggled against his nurse. He whimpered something about "monster" and "too scary." His nurse rocked, murmured, coddled, yet Harr would only bury his face, refusing to open his eyes. Cromwell folded him into his arms.

"I shall take you through each room," he murmured against Harr's wet cheeks. "And you will see there are no monsters. I do not allow them. They can knock at our door all they like; I will never let them in." Cromwell motioned with his chin for Elizabeth to take one of the larger candles. She kept pace behind her husband and son, lighting their way for them. At first, Harr ferociously clung to his father, but as they made their way through each room, and Cromwell made a great fuss of turning over pillows and looking under furniture, Harr opened one eye, then another. In the presence chamber, Harr finally agreed:

"No monsters."

"No monsters. Only a dream sweetheart." Elizabeth ruffled his curls. He wriggled out of Cromwell's arms to stand on his own unsteady feet. Elizabeth was about to lead him back to bed when they heard frantic pounding on the door. She shared a look with Cromwell that said: is this how it is to happen? Is this how they arrest you? When you are in your robe and standing with your baby?

"Lord Cromwell! Lord Cromwell!" they shouted. "The king will see you at once!"

"It might be nothing," Elizabeth whispered. She noticed Cromwell's hands shake. He clasped them tightly under his fur sleeves.

"Lord Cromwell! The king will see you!"

"It might be nothing," she repeated. Instinctively, she folded Harr's hand into her own.

"If it is not nothing," Cromwell began. "Well, you know what to do." Which meant, grab all the money you can, grab Harr, and leave. He drew in a deep breath. He smoothed his hair and pinched some color into his cheeks. No one could ever know if the Lord Privy Seal was flustered, tired, or laid low. Cromwell sucked in another breath before he unbolted the door. He managed to wash his face of concern and replace his look with one of impatience as he threw open the door.

"Mind your volume, my wife and son are trying to sleep." Cromwell kept his tone clipped, and business-like. Henry's servants craned to get a view of Elizabeth and Harr, intrigued that Cromwell might actually have a family.

"Must excuse the hour, sir," one of them began uncertainly. "The king told us to fetch you and no one else."

"Allow me a few moments to dress—"

"Oh, no. Sir. His Majesty says it is so urgent you must come as you are."

Elizabeth pulled Harr against her nightgown.

VI.

None of the privy servants would meet Cromwell's eye as they let him into the king's bedchamber. Cromwell caught the familiar sweet-sour smell of the king's wound. He took a step further, and the miasma washed over him. The ulcer must be seeping again, he thought. Henry hunched by the fireplace. He scribbled furiously at parchment, admired the sketch and threw it aside. The king had pulled his hood over his head; from this angle, Cromwell could swear Henry was a monk gone mad.

"Hey." Henry glanced over his shoulder. He tossed another drawing aside. Cromwell dared a few steps without an invitation. When Henry shoved aside another sketch, Cromwell made out the subtle curve of a woman's calf, the unmistakable cup of her buttocks.

"I thought you never slept." Henry rolled over onto his back and took in Cromwell's robe. "Did I wake you?"

"No, my boy was up. Nightmares. They are susceptible at that age." Cromwell closed his lips before he said any more.

Henry's eyes filled with tears. "Sometimes I get word from Hampton Court that Prince Edward is costive, or that he is fretful. My poor boy. He is all I have."

Apart from four wives and two daughters, Cromwell mentally checked.

Henry staggered to his full height. "Never has a man's mind and heart been so fully in accord as mine are now," he sighed. "My marriage is cursed. I am impotent with the queen."

Cromwell swallowed a lump of bile. He picked through his words. "Perhaps…plenty of water with your wine…fresh air…".

Henry began to pace. "I am as fit a king as any in Christendom. Thomas More once told me I eclipsed King Francis."

Not exactly what Cromwell had overheard from Wolsey…

"If I am impotent, it is because I am unmanned. If I am unmanned, it can only be because—" Henry lowered his voice. "There is witchcraft afoot. There is a witch in our midst."

Cromwell's veins iced over. Witchcraft. The most dangerous accusation that could ever be leveled at a woman. Sorcery. Witchcraft. Black magic. The sorts of words that men threw at a woman for no better reason than they thought she looked at their penis askance.

One of the upper logs crashed on the embers below. The fire sparked again, and in the increased light, Cromwell made out the leopard trim of Henry's robe. He had seen that fur before, in another time and place, when another Queen Anne sat on the throne. At the time, Cromwell thought she was wearing the most garish dressing gown ever created. But when she threatened to crop him at the neck (and for the first time he knew that she knew that he knew she meant it) the spots on her robe melded with her flesh until Cromwell had not been sure where the woman ended and the predator began.

Henry had cannibalized the dead queen's furs into his own wardrobe, and now he told Cromwell that he wanted to be rid of another wife. Cromwell always believed that there was nothing he would not do for advantage or an extra pound to his estate. In a strange way, he felt comforted that he had just discovered the imaginary border he could not traverse.

"I believe the queen has put spells on me. She was raised in heresy, you know? I want you to investigate the queen and her servants. I think she has ill-wished my manhood. She plays it dumb, but she is a cunning—"

"No." It took Cromwell a few seconds to realize he had just spoken.

"I believe my wife is a witch. The law must deal with her accordingly." Henry waved Cromwell away, as if he had just sent him to the market with a list of eggs, vegetables, and meat.

"I believe Your Majesty is mistaken," Cromwell spoke up. "The queen is pious. She is shy. She is unworldly, but she is no witch."

Henry rounded on him, drunk but quick. "So, suppose I say I was enchanted into making the marriage. Suppose I say one of my closest advisors, by way of sorcery and black arts…." Henry did not complete the thought. "There are those eager to believe it of you." The king laughed and turned generous. "Oh, Tom, I know you bound your name up in this marriage, as much as me, but rid us of the German Mare and I will make it worth your while."

Cromwell clasped his hands. "I am afraid, Your Majesty, I have no remedy to offer in this matter." Henry had his hands around his collar before Cromwell saw the king take a step forward.

"You have the most wicked intellect from here to the Alps, but you say you cannot fathom—"

"I cannot suffer another dead queen on my conscience," Cromwell said with quiet dignity. Henry slapped him hard on each cheek in quick succession.

"I pulled you out of a piss-hole in Putney. I will throw you-and your pathetic little family-back to the rubbish. You are the richest man in England because _I allow you to be_." Henry turned back to his drawings. "Rid me of the German cunt, or be supplanted by those who will," he barked. He smoothed his hair and his temper. "Oh, and Cromwell. I wish to make a gift to Mistress Katherine Howard. The late queen Jane had some manors gifted to her, which reverted to the Crown upon her death. I want to give those estates to my….my little Kitten Howard."

Cromwell stumbled out of the king's chambers, gasping for fresh air. He stood, directionless, in the empty hall. He wanted to bundle his family aboard a ship bound for the next tide. He wanted to shake the queen and ask her why she was so damn awkward. He wanted to strangle his king with his bare hands. He could not go back to Lissie tonight, that much he knew. He could not face her wide, mild eyes and tell her that her sister's estates were to be settled on a girl who could be tumbled for little more than a few new ribbons.

He found himself in his offices, in his private closet. He knelt, crossed himself, and mumbled every entreaty in every language he had ever learned. As soon as the earl's coronet rested on his head, Cromwell suspected he was running on borrowed time. But now, there could be no doubt. He prayed for mercy against an unjust world, an unjust king. He prayed his sons would have an easier life than him. Cromwell was never one to lose himself in prayer, and out of the corner of his eye, he caught a red head bobbing through his offices.

Why in the hell was Ralph Sadler still working? Cromwell tracked his movements. It seemed Ralph was contemplating whether or not to filch a pear off Cromwell's desk. Inwardly, Cromwell rolled his eyes: it is just a piece of bloody fruit, Ralph. If you want a pear, then take the bloody pear. Would you like a bill before Parliament to make up your mind for you?  
"My, lord!" Ralph exclaimed. Cromwell slowly turned to look at him.

"I'm sorry, sir! I did not see you," Ralph fumbled to fill the awkwardness between them. "I-"

"I was talking to God." Cromwell stunned himself when he admitted it. Ralph shifted uncertainly.

"Surely, sir, you have to go to church for that?"

Cromwell pulled his feet back under him and shook his head. "Ralph, do you understand nothing of our Reformation? God is not just in church. God is everywhere. And He does not need priests to speak for us. We can speak to Him ourselves, and He will listen. There is no need for bells, books, and candles, for incense. All you need is…_your soul_." Cromwell titled his head in thought. Then he smiled at Ralph. "Now go away," he said gently. "And _think_."

Ralph tried to understand Cromwell the best he could. He turned to leave.

"Wait." Cromwell called out. He plucked the biggest pear from the bowl and handed it to Ralph with a lop-sided smile that said: let us keep one another's secrets. He held the fruit out to Ralph an arm's length away. Ralph took it uncertainly, and then thawed when he realized he would not be scolded. He beamed at Cromwell and shuffled away.

Cromwell waited until Ralph's footsteps faded before digging around his desk. Like any man on borrowed time, he knew the sands were slipping through the hour glass; there was not much time to set things right. He fumbled through old letters (Wolsey's first solicitation of his services, his marriage contract to Bess, the letter Anne sent to him an hour before she died) before his long fingers found what they were looking for. He tucked the pearl choker into his fist before slamming the drawer shut on the memories within.

Dawn was not even an idea on the horizon, but Cromwell had already changed into his riding clothes. Elizabeth dozed on their bed, with Harr using her pregnant belly as a convenient pillow. Her forehead was too creased in worry for her to be asleep.

"Where are you going?" she murmured without opening her eyes.

"Business, in Kent. I will be back for supper."

"Are we in some sort of trouble?"

"God only knows. Keep Harr close to you." He hesitated. "Warn the queen as best you can."

In the stables, he tacked his favorite hunter, Bartleby, as quietly as he could. One of the grooms emerged with a lantern and a confused expression. Cromwell flipped him a coin, and he backed into the shadows.

"Surely sir, a high man such as yourself should not be concerned with saddling your horse," the boy murmured from the corner.

"I find I have two hands, and can do the job as well as any other man." Cromwell slipped the bridle over Bartleby's head. "If anyone asks for me, just say I had business in the country, but you could recall no more than that."

"My lord, the gates of the City will not be open until dawn."

"They'll open them for me," Cromwell remarked over his shoulder.

Once he clattered through the empty streets and cleared the perimeters of London, he turned south and cantered straight to Kent. There could be bandits, but at this hour, they were probably too drunk on mead to attempt a robbery. The stink of London faded and gave way to the scent of wet grass and honeysuckle. Bartleby had not been on the chase for some time, so his long legs held a steady, strong beat. Briefly, Cromwell remembered their mad pace, as they galloped to tell the king that Mark Smeaton had confessed to every imaginable sin with the queen.

Dawn woke up the farmers, and their wives prepared food stalls along the way. Cromwell asked which way to the Stafford farm, and all they could do was mutely point and gape at the well dressed man with the fine horse, a world away from London. He let Bartleby slow to a trot when he tired and sniff out a pond when he needed water. But despite a few sips here and a few stolen nibbles of flowers there, Cromwell reached the outskirts of Stafford's land by the time the noon sun hung heavy in the sky. He slowed Bartleby to a walk to take in the state of the tenants. Their homes were in good repair, and their fields were thick with grains. Neat rows of vegetable gardens dotted the roadside. You've done well by these people, Mary, Cromwell thought.

As he passed an oak tree, a pair of bare legs dangled in front of him. A girl, no more than ten, wrapped her legs around the branches and swung upside down to greet him. She frowned at the intrusion.

"Who are you? These are William and Mary Stafford's lands. No trespassing!"

Cromwell took a second look at the girl's eyes. They flashed turquoise fire not unlike….the king's.

"I'm Thomas Cromwell. And I am no trespasser. Who are you?"

The child flipped herself to rights and slid down the trunk. She straightened her skirts and puffed her chest. "I'm Catherine Stafford." She took in the quality of his boots and his horse. "You must be from court."

"I am an old friend of your mother's. Is she home?"

"Mama says I should not speak to men that Papa does not know."

"Your mother and your father are right. I'm an exception. How about this? I let you ride Bartleby, while we find your mother."

Catherine shyly pet Bartleby's haunches. "Is he mean?"

"No, just big." He slid out of the saddle and offered Catherine a leg up. "Remember what I said: I am the exception. You should not speak to men that you do not know."

Catherine nodded vigorously. Once Cromwell lifted her into the saddle, she held her chin high and practiced waving to imaginary crowds. Cromwell had no idea what sort of greeting to expect from Mary Boleyn as he walked up the path to the neat little manor house, with her daughter in tow. Mary stood at the fence and watched them approach for a while; Cromwell noticed her soft features change from incomprehension, to surprise, to uncertainty. Catherine waved eagerly at her mother.

"Catherine, get down from there this instant," Mary scolded. "Mr. Cromwell is a very important man from court, and I cannot have you bothering him."

"She is no trouble," Cromwell said as he lifted Catherine down. He patted her head. "Bartleby likes to be brushed and petted: why don't you fuss over him while I speak with your mother?"

As Catherine dashed off to find a brush, Cromwell and Mary stared at one another and the chasm of history that separated them.

"You look well, Mary," Cromwell broke the silence. "You have done well for yourself. Your fields are lush, your tenants are well looked after."

"It is hard work," she admitted. "Still, I would rather churn my own butter, brew my own ale, than sit down to another Whitehall feast." She wiped her hands anxiously on her apron. "You must be thirsty and hungry. We have plenty of food. It's simple, but good. I'll fix you a plate, then we can talk outside and enjoy the sunshine—and keep an eye on Catherine."

"She seems to have a mind of her own."

"It's the Boleyn in her."

A few moments later, Mary bustled out with a tray of soft, creamy cheese, warm bread, and a slab of ham. They watched Catherine unbridle Bartleby and sneak him fruit when she thought no one was looking.

"Is she…" Cromwell began uncertainly.

"The king's? Yes. Anne never knew. My father packed me off to Hever when I began to show. But when my family disowned me for William's baby, we took Catherine with us. I say that William is her father and that is all she need know." Mary sipped her ale in quiet thought. "Not much money changing in Kent; what brings you here? Trouble at court?"

"There is always trouble."

"I receive the money that you send, every month. You never sign the notes, but I know you send it. It is of great help to William and me." Mary tore a piece of bread off Cromwell's plate. "I hear that you married Jane Seymour's sister, and that you have a little boy."

"And another baby due this summer. Mary, I-" Cromwell said softly.

"Whatever you do, do not tell me you are sorry. Do not play contrite."

"Mary, I came here to say that…that I regret."

She shielded her hazel eyes against the sun. Other than a few freckles, Mary had not aged a day. Cromwell supposed she would not be able to say the same for him. She tracked Catherine across the pasture.

"That is a rare, fair thing in our world, is it not Master Cromwell? To be loved for oneself. Not for what connections you can provide or favors you can secure. But that moment, when someone looks at you, and you know they see you for yourself, and love you in spite of it." She turned towards him. "I do not believe you are completely heartless, not the way some people claim. Otherwise, your eyes would not look so sad." She finished her ale. "What really brings you here?"

"Mary…I…have something I think you should have. It belonged to your sister." He pulled the pearl choker from his vest pocket. Mary went still as ice when he handed it to her. "She wore it 'til the very end."

She said nothing, but pressed the cool pearls to her forehead. When she looked up, her eyes were red and tear streaked.

"Get out," she muttered.

"I'm sorry, Mary," he said lamely

"Get. Off. My. Land." Mary enunciated through clenched teeth. Her voice cracked. "If you do not leave here in ten seconds I will scream for my husband. Go back to court, and do not ever come back here."

Cromwell stood abruptly and bowed as if to a princess. As he glanced over his shoulder, he saw Mary's shoulder shake as she wept quietly. Catherine dropped the brush and ran to her mother. She smoothed Mary's hair whispering, "Don't get sad again, Mama, don't get sad."

Once back at court, the king shouted, slapped, screeched: "Where the hell have you been, Cromwell? Do you not know? Nothing gets done around here without you! Without you, I am surrounded by knaves! Knaves!" Cromwell bowed and meekly mumbled about "personal business", "countryside," "begging your royal pardon."

"What business could you possibly have that does not concern me?" Henry shouted. Cromwell figured if he was to be rebuked publicly, at least it was to the effect that he was indispensable. "Have you foisted a bastard on some milkmaid? Did you need to make reparations?" The king sniffled. "What were we to do without out you? Well, do not leave court again without my permission."

Cromwell slunk back to his office, but not so humbled that he could not slide Charles Brandon a satisfied smirk that the king just told the world that he cannot manage without his black badger. Actually, Cromwell did not mind the nickname. He'd been called worse things. He settled into his familiar chair to catch up on the paperwork he missed. Fortunately, nothing had gone serious wrong that day. The queen still had her head, the king was not trying to arrest the Pope, and Edward Seymour was not tormenting puppies in the royal kennel. He had just drafted a response to a petition for a preacher's license when his keen, fox ears picked up on the clatter of a woman's heels down the corridor. He rose, about tell Elizabeth to stop being ridiculous and get some rest for the sake the baby, but it was Catherine Brandon who peeked her small face around the door.

"Is anyone else here?" she asked shortly. Cromwell shook his head. She slipped behind the door without an invitation.

"Your Grace?" he asked uncertainly. "I trust you find my shipments…satisfactory."

Catherine did not answer but hugged her slight arms.

"Your Grace?" he asked again. "Are you well?"

"If I stood in your shoes, I would be hailing the first boat to Lambeth Palace," she said.

"I do not understand—"

"If I were you," Catherine repeated slowly, clearly. "I would stick my nose in at Lambeth Palace and pay an unexpected call on the Dowager Duchess."

Cromwell carefully parsed the message. "Why are you helping me?" he asked baldly.

"I never thanked you for your assistance, and your discretion, when I lost the child I carried." Her frightened brown eyes sparkled. "You and me, we are both in the mouth of the wolf." She folded herself behind the door as quietly as she had appeared.

VII.

Elizabeth fiddled with the melody she played while Katherine Howard danced under a rain of vanity and wealth. She never asked where Cromwell disappeared to that day. For an awful moment, she sickened that he might have left England in a tiny boat. But she knew he could never abandon her or Gregory or Harr: his family was his true religion. A chord and few words sprang in her head.

"_The castles built so tall, only left us further to fall. Yet I see them far away as they wash away." _She pushed the lute aside and knew she had to speak the truth. She made for the queen's rooms, pausing only long enough to shove her feet into her brocade slippers.

Anne was already in her nightshift, sleek and groomed as any mare awaiting a stallion to cover her. She made a little "ach" sound when she took in Elizabeth's nightgown and velvet robe.

"I must speak with your majesty." Elizabeth did not wait for an invitation to admittance in the queen's bed chamber. They both knew the king would not visit that night. Elizabeth pulled a stool close to Anne's chair.

"What have they told you about the former Queen Anne?" she whispered.

"In Germany, we hear she was a witch, when I travel through France, they say she made treason. But in England? No one tell me nothing."

"Anne Boleyn was no witch, and she was no traitor."

"I do not understand—"

"The king no longer wanted her," Elizabeth said gruffly.

"But, but who accuse her?" Anne demanded. Elizabeth put her finger to her lips. Anne got the message and lowered her voice.

"When the king needs witnesses, he makes them."

Anne shook her head, refusing to understand. "But she had a trial, yes?"

"I think, if the king offers you terms, a deal, you should take it and not look back," Elizabeth said.

"For a divorce?" Anne dared her to say it. Elizabeth nodded dumbly. "How do you know such things?" the queen demanded.

"Because I have seen this before."

"With your sister?" Anne did not wait for an answer. "Did the king kill the queen to marry your sister?" Maybe it was Anne's lack of English that made the words so blunt, but Elizabeth could not imagine any sort of gloss to make the truth more palatable.

"My sister and I were both ladies to Anne Boleyn," Elizabeth hinted.

"Like Katherine Howard?"

Elizabeth nodded. "You understand now how serious the situation has become?"

"But, your husband, he brought me here. He will not let the king replace me?" Anne insisted.

"My husband made possible the king's last two divorces. He found the witnesses against the queen." Elizabeth felt a tug of betrayal, but she could not repaint history. She could not reach back in time and make Thomas Cromwell to be someone he was not. Anne's eyes darted furiously as her logic marched on. Finally, she asked the question Elizabeth dreaded the most.

"Who spoke against the queen?" she demanded.

"One day, my husband summoned the queen's ladies—"

"You too?" Anne asked horrified. Elizabeth nodded.

"He locked us up, questioned us one by one. He told us the answers he wanted." Her stomach went sick at the memory, at that moment when she realized that nothing stood between her and Cromwell. He might have strangled her. He might have raped her. He could have made her disappear.

"You-you lied." Anne was stubbornly incredulous.

"I was terrified. When there's only you and Lord Cromwell in the room, and you realize that he can do anything, anything—" she could not complete the thought. "He is the sort of man who knows how to use fear and power. What I am saying here tonight—which I trust will not leave these walls—is this: the king and Lord Cromwell are dangerous men. They are not your friends. They are not to be trusted, especially when they look you in the eye and pledge their undying support."

"But you are married to…" Anne stopped herself. As if any wife really _chose _her husband.

"I am his wife, I bear his children. And I know what he capable of." Elizabeth straightened herself to standing. "I beg Your Majesty, if the king offers you any sort of arrangement, a way to go quietly, then take it. Because I have my own family, and I will do or say whatever it takes to protect them."

Anne nodded slowly in time with Elizabeth's words. "Who am I to trust?" she asked blankly.

"No one. You trust no one except your own heart and your own wits."

VIII.

Elizabeth had to admire Anne of Cleves as she sat under the canopy of the royal box. Anne held out her kerchief, ready to tie her favors to her chosen knight of the May Day joust. Anne wore a neatly tailored dress, structured, and it showed off her slim figure. Her face was more defined, less round, when she pulled her wheaten hair back with a diadem. Anne stood so straight and sure of herself, anyone else would think she had been the only queen to ever sit under that canopy. But three other women had sweated under that embroidered canopy, blaming the heat, blaming ill cooked pork. Three other queens had waved to the crowd even as they feared for their own lives.

"You'd think the king would order a new canopy," Jane Boleyn remarked, mirroring her own thoughts. "One can only embroider over so many initials." H + K. Then H+A. Then H+J. Now back to H+A.

"The king has practically run through the entire alphabet," she laughed, but it came out brittle.

"Who will you place your money on?" Catherine Brandon asked. She rarely came to court, but when she did, she sat with the queen as the senior noblewoman of the court.

Elizabeth studied the lists. "If you like to win: Richard Cromwell, my husband's nephew. If you like to stay out of trouble: Lord Surrey, Henry Howard."

"Not your brother, Tom Seymour?" Catherine prodded gently.

"No." Elizabeth tugged at her wedding ring. "No, I think not." From her vantage point at the queen's box, Elizabeth had an unobstructed view of Cromwell and Gregory seated slightly behind the king. She could practically hit the moment that Cromwell told Gregory he would marry the Dorset girl. Gregory's velveteen features went ashy, then frozen, then strained as he struggled to keep his composure. For a fleeting moment, Elizabeth felt a little jealous of the bride to be: a girl awaiting her first marriage to a pretty, learned, gentle young man, her stomach fluttering with a strange mix of nervousness and hope as she chose her wedding linens. Then she shook her head of it. Cromwell confused her, made her hungry, made her wet, and there was no sense in mourning for grains of time that had already slipped through her fingers.

"Master Gregory looks ill," Jane observed loudly.

"Master Gregory will get over it." Elizabeth shrugged. She used Jane to brace her weight as she heaved to standing. "I am going to see Richard suit up. I trust you ladies will help the queen lay her favors of where they are the most use."

In his tent, Richard struggled at the last moment to pin Cromwell's latest coat of arms to the horse's livery. Silently, Elizabeth took the needle and cloth from him. She carefully thread the needle through the cloth weaving in a over-under pattern and affixed it behind the saddle.

"No one told me Kit was leaving," she sighed.

"It was a hurried affair. One night we were eating dinner, the next morning she was packing." Richard pulled his chainmail hood away from his broad forehead.

"It looks to be a lean season for us Cromwells out there," Richard smiled. "But the queen looks happy-"

"That's what queens do," Elizabeth said tersely. "They swallow their own bitterness and eat their own fear, just so they can sparkle for everyone else." She patted his horse. "You aren't thinking of leaving, are you?" She hoped he might say yes. She hoped he might say no.

"Ah, my wife, Frances, she is too much a woman of London. She wants to stay, so we shall."

Elizabeth tied her favors around his lance. "And how is Gregory taking the news of his upcoming marriage?"

"Last I saw, my uncle was administering smelling salts to him," Richard crackled. "It's for the little squirt's own good. You best remind him of that." Richard turned away to finish suiting up. "Fucking May Day," he muttered under his breath.

On her way back to the queen's box, a giggle floated from the king's tent. Elizabeth caught the brief rustle of pink taffeta. Katherine Howard wore a smile like the cat that ate the pet bird. She smoothed her distressed hair and tried to walk as if nothing were awry. I do not know much in this world, Elizabeth said to herself, but I know women. I know when one has just had a man inside her. Katherine walked easy as the May breeze; no virgin would move her hips so carefree. Elizabeth deliberately placed herself in Katherine's path.

"Ooh, my Lady Cromwell, I did not see you," she said sweetly.

"Really? I find that difficult to believe. I am the size of a house."

Katherine laughed, thinking Elizabeth was making a joke. "Like one of Holbein's models."

Elizabeth closed the distance between them in a single stride. "How much is brother paying you? What has Suffolk offered you?" she hissed through her teeth. "Because my husband can pay you double, triple."

"I only take what the king offers me-"

"Has he offered you another woman's crown? He has offered many women the same thing, and most of them are dead."

"He loves me!" Katherine cried desperately. "I like to be loved. Is that so wrong, to want to be loved and treasured?"

"Katherine, I am warning you one last time: walk away while you can."

The teenage mistress screwed her lips into either a pout or solemn determination.

"Leave off the king. Else my husband will rip your stupid little life apart. And if he does not do it, then I will."

As Elizabeth left behind a dumbstruck girl, she muttered under her breath, "God Damn May Day."

IX.

Normally, Cromwell tried not to take any advice that was not his own. Yet, he found himself in his official barge, rowing up to Lambeth Palace, seat of the Dowager Duchess. Ralph pulled his cap over his head as the Lord Privy Seal's official badge fluttered on the flags behind them

"Are you sure it wise to make so public a procession?" he asked. "In an hour, Suffolk and Gardiner will have word that you have been looking into matters."

"Let them know. Let them marinate on it and sweat it out, wondering what I know." Cromwell straightened his gold chain.

"And once we dock, what do tell her Grace? 'Oh sorry to drop in unannounced. We heard you are running a glorified brothel. Mind if we have a look around?'"

"Have more faith in my powers of improvisation," Cromwell grinned.

The appearance of Cromwell's barge caused a minor blizzard of activity at Lambeth. The old dowager herself waddled down to the launch to greet her unexpected guest. Judging from the way the woman sway without a breeze and hiccupped, she'd had some honeyed ale for breakfast and little else. Cromwell surveyed the field and made his attack. He swept her an over-grand bow.

"Your Grace, you are as radiant as ever." The words rolled out like silk. She thawed immediately; attention from a handsome man at her age had become a rarity. She held out a ringed hand for him to kiss.

"My lord, we are pleased—just unprepared for such a distinguished guest," she simpered as Cromwell made a production of kissing her hands and taking them in his own. She glanced past him. "And who is this delightful young man? I would have thought a Putney man would keep company with ruffians. But he is as pretty and mild as a lamb."

"Oh, Master Sadler has a desperate reputation with the ladies," Cromwell laughed. "Ralph, stop embarrassing me and come kiss her Grace's hands."

She pinched Ralph's plump, young cheeks. "If I were thirty years younger, you would be in trouble young man. A woman of my age does not receive many male callers, not on her own account. They all come to see my girls." She turned frosty. "Is that why you two are here? To see the latest acquisitions?"

"Heavens no," Cromwell reassured her. "But Master Sadler and I come on an urgent matter….. I am so sorry to tell you this, Your Grace. But, there is a problem with your taxes."

"Why upon my word, I did not know I paid them." She fluttered herself with a Venetian lace fan.

Cromwell smiled slowly. "Perhaps Master Sadler could sit with you and explain things. I am sure we can clear up any misunderstanding this afternoon."

As they made their way to the palace, Cromwell pulled Ralph's stricken face towards his. "Keep her flattered. Keep her drunk. Keep her distracted." Every so often, their paths were pulled up short by a few girls chasing one another, or shrieking after a boy. His daughters would be about their age, and he was quite sure that Bess would never have let Anne and Grace leave the house dressed as wanton as these wild things.

"You run a liberal household," Cromwell remarked idly.

"Little monsters, all of them. How could I possibly be expected to keep order?" The duchess seated herself on a sofa and patted the space next to her. Cromwell nudged Ralph in the ribs.

"Oh, no," Ralph whispered.

"Oh, yes," Cromwell corrected. "Your grace, have Master Sadler advise you. You wouldn't mind if I inspected the gardens? I need some new ideas for my London house."

"Just-just keep your wandering to the gardens," she said firmly.

It did not take Cromwell long to figure out what the old battle axe was hiding. Every corner he turned, he practically smacked into a couple with their hands hidden down breeches and up skirts. Girls and boys dashed back and forth from their separate sleeping quarters. Cromwell doubted the holy Mother Mary could have left this place intact.

As soon as he mentioned Katherine's name, every girl smirked and said: "Go ask Francis Dereham." Every young man turned coy and said: "Oh, Katherine, I know Katherine."

He located Dereham outside, swinging his sword wildly at an oak tree. A young woman watched him, looking irritated and resigned at once. Dereham was shouting something, but the context was murky.

"And now! Now they are taking her away from me! I said: Kitten, wait for me. I'll come back from Ireland, I'll marry you like we promised. Now, they are taking her away from me!" he raged at the tree.

"That's a fine sword arm you have young man," Cromwell interrupted. Actually, he thought Dereham would not last a single summer in Italy with that sort of flailing. The girl made quick arithmetic of his chain of office and fine velvet robes. She dropped into a quick curtsey.

"Francis," she hissed. "Show some deference to your betters. Sorry, my lord. Francis is slow on the uptake. "

"And you are?" he asked.

"Joan. Joan Bulmer." She frantically smoothed her thick brown hair. Her face was broad, unremarkable, but she fluttered her lashes.

Cromwell made himself a seat against the oak. "Now I am a man who can solve problems. Who is taking your lady away?"

Dereham stabbed his sword into the soil. "My little Katherine Howard. We are pre-contracted, you know. But now the Duchess says we cannot marry and I must put her from my mind. They took her away to court."

Cromwell watched Joan's face pinch and harden. A solitary tear slid down her cheek. "You will miss your friend?" he guessed. He pulled an orange from his pocket and began to peel it.

"Why should I not be happy? Everything irons smoothly for Kathy. All the men wanted her—Mannox would not look twice at me—"

"Mannox?" Cromwell asked.

"The music teacher," Dereham explained. He went back to practicing war. "He was a sweaty lout who tried to teach the virginals. Kathy liked to lead him on, she wasn't but 12 or 13. Who knows how far Mannox might have gone had she not met a real man—"

"A real man?" Joan sneered. "Like you, Francis?"

"I was man enough for you once, wasn't I?" he shot back.

"Piss off Francis!"

"Children!" Cromwell said tiredly. He divided the orange slices between himself and Joan. She chewed thoughtfully.

"The Old Battle Axe tells us to think well on Kathy, that she is about to be raised to the greatest station in the land. Is it true?" Joan's lips trembled. Cromwell could see her life written on her face: forever in the shadow of lovelier women.

"It is a distinct possibility," Cromwell admitted. "Take heart, Mistress Bulmer. Have no envy for your friend. Should she be…promoted…there is no reason you cannot rise with her star." An idea formed itself in Cromwell's mind, and he smiled.

"Oh, Kathy will have nothing to do with our pedigree. Surrounded by people like Suffolk and the king," Dereham noted bitterly.

"Should Mistress Howard find herself a woman of means, there is no reason for her to deny you both favors—like placement in her household. Write to her, plead the wretchedness of your lives…and then remind her of where she came from, friends you _share in common_." Cromwell stood to leave and flipped his last orange to Joan with his most charming grin. "Information is more valuable than gold. And you, children, have all the information you need on Katherine Howard. Any favor is yours for the asking from her."

On the boat ride back, Ralph sat stricken. "I hope you appreciate the extent to which I serve you." He wiped his mouth of the Duchess's wet kisses.

"We all make our sacrifices for England, Ralph. A few pinches, and few kisses—I say you got off rather lightly." Cromwell tipped his head up to enjoy the late May sun: warm, but not oppressive. He felt better than he had in months.

"Do we at least have enough to bring down the Howard chit?"

Cromwell closed his eyes and basked in the sun like a cat. "The beautiful thing is: Katherine did all of our work for us. She will be disgraced. Those who jumped her up will tumble down with her."

X.

Edward and Anne Stanhope glared across the table at Gardiner. He returned their look with about as much warmth as a lizard. Brandon shuffled a deck of cards. Francis burst into the room, rescuing everyone from the silence.

"I called this meeting because we need to move quickly," he said.

"Why?" Edward challenged. "Cromwell will not budge on the Cleves marriage one way or the other. He is doing our work for us."

"Because Cromwell has been poking around Lambeth."

Edward shrugged. "What is that to me?"

Francis sucked in a quick breath, and Brandon's cards went still.

"What is the problem? Why should we worry what is at Lambeth?" Edward insisted.

"Remember I said that her upbringing was unconventional? It's a little more than that. Loose was probably the better word."

"The king has already had her. She is no virgin one way or the other," Anne snorted.

"Thomas Wyatt almost lost his head for loving a woman before she became queen," Brandon said quietly. He threw down his cards. "Francis is right: now is the time to strike. The French are sick of Cromwell always sidelining them in favor of the Emperor, and let it be known how much relations would improve without Cromwell in the way. The king has always wanted a French alliance. It's only Cromwell with his damn army of bankers and merchants that pushes the Imperial agenda."

"We need to move quickly," Francis repeated. "Because if that black badger tittle-tattles to the king about Katherine's...escapades..."

Anne stared at Edward and mouthed: "do something." They were both uneasy about moving in the same pack as Gardiner. They both worried about who would fill the space left by Cromwell.

Instead, Edward heard himself say: "Fine, we move forward with what we have."

Secretly, Edward worried that nothing could destroy Cromwell. Like broken bones, his wounds and defeats fused together to create an even stronger mass. God save us all, Edward thought, if Cromwell survives this scrape. He thought about that stupid song that Lissie would not stop singing: _the castles we built were so tall. They only left us further to fall._

**Well dear readers and loyal reviewers, one final chapter to go. And I still don't know how it will end.**


	26. Chapter 26

A/N: I know, I know I said this would be the final chapter. But, because it was getting up to 30 pages, I thought that for the sake of the reader, it would be easier to digest if I split in two. I will do my best to have the last installment up before Christmas.

During the first week of June, summer marched into London, sat on the City, and would not leave. Black clouds nestled in the sky but did not rain, and trapped the heat and humidity. At night, Elizabeth pushed open every window, yet she could scarcely breathe. Maybe it was the heat. Or she wondered if she was not waiting for a sign that she could exhale and rest easy. For the past several days, she had lived two lives. During the day, one Elizabeth gossiped and fanned herself in the queen's rooms. When the sun set, the other Elizabeth lived under siege, tensely embroidering jewelry and coins into vests and quilts, while her husband paced and fretted.

That night, as June began its second week, Elizabeth sat with Cromwell in the window embrasure, trying to catch what little breeze there was. They faced each other, knees bent, shin resting against shin.

"The king ordered the ports closed again," he told her.

"He suspects us?" she asked. The baby inside her tossed and turned.

"Maybe. Maybe he is afraid the queen will leave him before he has the chance to do the same."

"If you were to tell him about Katherine's other lovers—" Elizabeth hesitated.

"He would not believe it." Cromwell shook his head. "He is still too much in lust to wonder how his perfect jewel of womanhood came by her skills. Charles Brandon tried to warn the king off Anne Boleyn, and he was banished for the favor." The duke had breathed a single word against Anne's chastity, and Cromwell was given the pleasure of telling Charles Brandon to leave court until Henry said otherwise.

"I suppose that is where His Grace's dislike of me began," Cromwell mused. He wrapped his arms around Elizabeth's bent legs and rested his chin on her knees as he thought.

"What is my brother doing? Running with Gardiner and Brandon?" she wondered.

"He is probably thinking that Prince Edward has too many uncles," Cromwell replied. "Which does not bode well for your younger brother, Tom."

Elizabeth nodded. Where were the young men with whom she had grown up alongside? Where were the boys who pretended to be knights, while she and Jane wrapped themselves in their mother's silks and pretended to be charging Saracens? These days, Elizabeth could brush sleeves with her brothers and barely notice. They were worse than strangers.

"If we can make it through the summer, I think we will manage all right," Cromwell said. He splayed his palm against her belly. The baby rolled again. "I promise we will see better days again, my love."

After Cromwell dozed off, Elizabeth unfolded herself from her window seat and made her way to the writing desk. She made her seal in the upper corner of the parchment; it contained her initials, but Cromwell's coat of arms. Since Jane died, she had accepted she could no longer be a Seymour. In clean, careful strokes, she wrote to Gregory:

_I cannot say how this story is to end. Please take the enclosed key and show my seal to your father's clerks. I am entrusting you with the funds from my Northern estates. You know where it should be hidden, where Harr took his first steps. If anything should happen to me or your father, please look after Harr. I hope the summer is mild at Cambridge. _

_-Lissie_

She leaned back to review what she had written before sprinkling the drying sand. Part of her knew that she could put her lump sum to nobler uses: dowries for poor maidens, hospitals for lepers. Yet in the heat of that stifling night, all Elizabeth could think was that she would rather see that treasure buried and forgotten than have a single farthing come into the king's bloated, poisonous fingers. Before she could second guess herself, Elizabeth fetched the key that she kept in her jewelry box and sealed it up inside the letter. The red wax dribbled and flowed over the letter like rivulets of blood.

II.

Across Whitehall, in another stuffy apartment, another couple held a vigil. Anne Stanhope watched the last embers of an unnecessary fire die out. In the dim light of a few candles, her features were unreadable. Edward regarded her for a few moments.

"Why the long face? What has one of your lovers spurned you and left you with nothing to do this evening?" He waited for her to take the bait. She didn't, just leaned forward, watching the smoke as if she could divine some fortune from it. Disappointed, Edward pitched himself into the chair next to her.

"What are we going to do?" she asked. Her voice dipped low and serious; Edward had never heard her speak like this. "Gardiner's already sniffing around Protestants like Latimer and Shaxton. Cromwell at least has the audacity to hide in plain sight and keep Gardiner distracted. But what will we do when that Roman dog no longer has his toy to keep him sated? What will we do if the bishop comes scratching around our door?"

"So tell your friend, Anne Askew, to keep her voice down," Edward said shortly.

"So tell me what exactly are we doing?"

"The Prince of Wales is the key to this family's destiny. I will not allow Cromwell to stand in the way of my—"

"And what if Gardiner gets to us before we have a chance to see that boy crowned? What if he has us tied to the stake before you can fulfill your precious destiny? What if the Howards displace us again?" Anne held herself tightly, even though it was not the least bit cold. She regained her usual, merry cruelty. "In any event, I will be sad to see him die," she said lightly. "Cromwell, I mean. Honestly, Edward—he is the only one around here who can skirmish at your level. And I think you like him a little for that."

III.

Sir Thomas Wyatt spent so much of his time walking beside ghosts of the past, he often wondered if he might have been better off becoming one himself, dying with the other innocent accomplices of Anne Boleyn. Except he would have been the only guilty man on the scaffold. Now, as he ambled through the ancient halls of Westminster, he pushed the bloody days out of his mind; he could not put ink to paper when the phantoms visited.

A scream echoed off the marble and wood. Why, Mister Smeaton, how good of you to join me, Wyatt thought. I miss your fiddle playing; fine thing Cromwell took your eye instead of your hands. Wyatt shrugged away the haunted wailing and ran a few verses through his head.

"I am no traitor!" This time the ghost found a proper voice.

No, no, of course you are not, Henry Norris, Wyatt bitterly chuckled to himself. None of us were, but it is time to accept your headless fate.

"I am no traitor!" the voice repeated. Wyatt checked his stride. Footsteps—boots slapping against the marble floor—came up fast behind him. You've run a little mad, Wyatt told himself. No ghosts are chasing you. The shouting and commotion moved closer, and Wyatt dared himself to turn around. He discovered a phantom from the past, but in the very mortal body of Thomas Cromwell. The Tower guards dragged a struggling, screaming Lord Privy Seal past an astonished poet.

"I am no traitor!" Cromwell yelled. He still wore his expensive, plush robes, but the gold chain of his high station was missing.

"Show some dignity for your person!" The Captain barked over Cromwell's protests.

Wyatt flung himself back against a stone pillar, eager to be invisible, eager to not be arrested again. Too late. Cromwell's sharp eyes caught the movement. He sank to his knees, slipping his arms through his robes and broke towards Wyatt. His slender fingers took hold of Wyatt's doublet with a ferocious grip and pulled the two men together

"You must warn them," Cromwell whispered desperately against Wyatt's ear.

"But-but…warn? Warn who?" His tongue fumbled as Cromwell's hands tightened their grip, a storm-tossed sailor clinging to shipwreck.

"Warn everyone!" Cromwell managed before the guards tore his hands from Wyatt's vest—and ripped the silk in the process.

"God's sake! Mister Cromwell!" The Captain of the Guard bellowed. "Show some dignity." He signaled to his men to hitch their arms under Cromwell and carry him over their shoulders like a coffin. One of men hurled Cromwell's discarded robe at Wyatt.

"One would think he would show the same sort of presence as his victims," he shook his head before marching along with the others.

Amazed, Wyatt stared at the once proud, now crumpled robe in his hands. He honestly never thought it possible. Thomas Cromwell, the most powerful, richest man in England, had been cut down in the very reign of fear and false accusations he had created. How could such a nimble spider become caught in his own web? Wyatt held the robe against his chest. The cloth still smelled of…power. Of a man who thought he was too good to keep his garment packed in cedar, but instead used priceless sandalwood chips. The sort of man who, until this afternoon, had been indestructible.

Wyatt collapsed against the stone column. "My God," he murmured out loud. "The pillar has perished."

IV.

When they came for her, Elizabeth knew before she knew. She sat alone with Harr in the nursery, letting his small fingers turn the pages of a treatise on painting that Cromwell had brought back with him from Italy, when she heard the steady drum of boots march through the gallery.

"Jesus Christ, they've come for me too," she whispered.

"Mama, what's wrong?" Harr carefully placed his hand over her heart.

"We-we need to leave, Harr." She bolted upright, the book falling from their hands. Harr tried to wiggle from her grasp, but she held him tight to her waist.

"Where?"

"I cannot say," she told him shortly. The thick steps of men on their way to beat her door down rumbled through her ears and drowned out her panicky heartbeat.

"Can I take my ducks?" Harr asked. He smiled as if they were about to go on a picnic.

"No." Elizabeth was too dazed to think of a gentle lie for him. He pushed his hands against her bodice as she moved quickly, quietly down the hall. "Harr! Stop that!" she scolded.

"Grey-ry comes with us?" A note of worry crept into his voice. She cradled one arm under Harr's rump and another under her belly as she picked up her pace towards her bedchamber.

"Grey-ry comes with us?" Harr repeated.

"No." She balanced him as she swiped a parcel from under the bed that contained a few coin laced quilts and changes of linen.

"I want to take my ducks," he insisted.

"Harr, be still!"

"No! No! I don't want to go-"

Elizabeth clamped her hand over Harr's mouth when his cheeks puffed up for a screaming fit. She pressed her ear against the secret door that led from the bedroom into a maze of passages. She heard the same drone: heavy boots stomping towards her door. Her mind clumsily shuffled a few ideas but rejected them all as too risky for a woman with one child in her belly and another balanced on her hip. The king had wanted her as cornered as a hare with no escape from his hounds, and so she was.

She dashed to Cromwell's study, with Harr's frightened, moist breath against her palm. Once behind the door, Elizabeth locked it and choked back a sob at the stupid futility of it all. Was a locked door going to protect her from King Henry's favor turned sour? All she had was time, and Elizabeth clung to what spare moments she had. She allowed Harr to climb down from her arms and rage at her skirts while she yanked out any and every book that the accusers could label as too "modern," or too "foreign." When she dumped them in the smoldering fireplace, the embers touched the pitch in the binding, and the flames popped to life. Harr cried out when the fire roared.

"Sit there, Harr," she ordered, pointing to a corner far from the open grate. Finally, he did as he was told. He tucked his knees up to his chin; his squat legs shook with the realization that something terrible was about to happen.

"Where are we going?" he whispered.

"Somewhere," she said as she swept Cromwell's desk clear of drafts and unfinished letters. Before tossing them to the fire, she thumbed through the papers to find the most recently dated letter, from a Stephen Vaughan in Antwerp. She had heard his name before when Cromwell called him, "our man across the Channel." Elizabeth pushed the letter into her bodice and shoved the other letters into the fire.

There came a shout, then a crash against the door. Harr squeezed his eyes shut and cupped his ears with his hands; Elizabeth wanted very much to do the same, but she rooted herself to the task at hand and struggled with the lock to Cromwell's desk.

"Damn it! Elizabeth! Open this door! You will open this door in the name of the king!" The sound of her brother, Tom, screaming on the other side filled the study. The door knob shook violently. "I've had enough of this chase! One of you fools break down the door!"

She backed away from the desk to where Harr sat. Gently, she reached down to pull him to standing. If they take us away, she thought, they will find us on our feet—not groveling on our knees. Harr squeezed her hand back, but he kept his eyes smashed shut.

"Mama," he whispered.

"You hold my hand," she said evenly. "No matter what happens, keep hold of my hand."

The door creaked and groaned with what Elizabeth could only imagine was the weight of several men bearing down on it. When the iron latch gave way, the oak flung open, spilling a half dozen guards into the small room. Tom stood gallantly a few feet away from the heap. The jewels embroidered into his doublet winked mischievously as the firelight bounced off them. Tom's eyes tracked to the flames licking at half-burned pages.

"Sister," he said. The word rang hollow and had no meaning between them anymore. "Lissie, that is such a bright fire for such a hot day, don't you think?" Tom stared her down as if he were placing her on trial already. Elizabeth pushed Harr a little more behind her.

"Good day to you, Tom." Her own voice surprised her with its steadiness.

"Going somewhere?" Tom gestured to the parcel Elizabeth had tucked under her arm. His pert eyes went dark as slate. "Sister, I come with grave news." He licked his lips. "Your husband has been arrested for high treason. He has been taken to the Tower."

Elizabeth said nothing as he studied her intently, waiting for a single glance to betray her.

"You brought many friends just to give me bad tidings," she said after the silence hung too long.

Tom threw back his head and gave a shouting laugh. "Do not look so morbid, Elizabeth. We are not here to arrest you. I am here to protect you. The king orders that I take you into custody, for your own safety."

"My safety?" she blurted. Harr's hand squeezed tighter.

"Yes, your safety," he snorted. "Here I am come to liberate you from Cromwell's plots and heresy—and whatever beastly appetites he heaped upon you at night—yet you look at me as though I handed you a sack of lemons and salt to suck on." Tom knelt down and offered Harr a thick, bejeweled hand. The child glanced between his mother and his uncle, trembling with indecision.

"No, Harr stays with me." Elizabeth shook her head. "And tell your brutes to wait like gentlemen in the receiving room. I want to pack a few things for myself and my son."

Tom sighed and snapped his fingers at the guards behind him. "I feared you might say something as such." Two men moved in front of Tom. "Take her, take the brat," he barked. "Honestly, Lissie. You make more of a fuss, and I would swear you were as guilty as Cromwell." The men advanced on her, opening their arms, muttering: "easy girl, easy girl," as if to a shy pony. She helplessly pressed herself against the wall, holding Harr tight. Tom swore under his breath and reached for Harr. He caught the small arms, yanking Harr from Elizabeth's grasp.

"Now, there's a good lad!" Tom said buoyantly as he bounced the boy up and down.

"Tom! Stop! Stop! You're hurting him!" Elizabeth cried out. One of the guards wrenched her arm around her back, and she yelped. Harr's feet paddled desperately at thin air, trying to gain a foothold, as his uncle roughly grabbed him under his arms.  
"Please, Tom," she whimpered as she watched her son struggle. "Let him be." Another guard tried to hook her free arm as she clung to the parcel.

"God damn it! God damn it! You disgusting little pig!" Tom yelled suddenly. He held Harr an arm's length away, by the scruff of the smock. Harr cried huge sobbing gulps as urine ran down his legs and into his brocade slippers. Tom took one last look at the warm, wet stain spreading across the crisp white linen of Harr's gown before chucking the boy towards the wall. His head cracked against the paneling with such a sickening thud that Elizabeth's mouth could only hang open, the scream trapped in her throat. Stunned, the guards dropped her arms, and she ran to Harr's motionless body.

One moment felt like one year as she rolled his small form over her knees. At first he did not move, but as she frantically pet him, he stirred. Harr opened one dazed eye, then another. Elizabeth was aware of her mouth opening and closing, but her tongue was too dry to form words. Finally, a sob burst from him, and he reached for Elizabeth. She held him as though her life depended upon it.

"You could have killed him!" she screamed at her brother. "What sort of man are you? What sort of man does that—"

"My sister is hysterical. Take her away before she does much harm to herself or her child," Tom huffed irritably.

Elizabeth fended off the gauntleted hands reaching to pull her son from her, slapping wildly. In the fray, one of the guards managed to hitch the boy over his hip. The fight went out of her as soon as Harr was taken. Two other men hauled her to the tips of her toes, half dragging, half carrying. She struggled as much as the bulk of the unborn child would let her. She wrenched her head around to see Tom shaking his head and rolling his eyes as he bent to pick up the tattered parcel.

"You are no brother of mine, Tom!" she yelled. "No more. You are no Seymour to me!" In the last act of defiance she could muster, Elizabeth set her jaw and spit at Tom's blank, killer's face. He regarded her for a few seconds before slapping her mouth with the back of his hand. Her head rolled with the force of the strike. Tom placed his lips to her ear.

"Listen and listen well," he hissed. "I remember the family that gave me my name. But you? You stopped being a Seymour a long time ago." He straightened himself and tossed the parcel to another guard. "Lissie, if you keep apace like this, we will put you on the same scaffold as Cromwell."

The Thames flowed under Tom's barge like mist. Eventually, the man holding Harr shoved the little boy back to Elizabeth. He wrapped his arms and legs around her round belly and wept; he cried so long and so hard that he forgot the original cause of his tears. She whispered comfort into his dark curls as best she could, all the while keeping her eyes keen for where they were headed. In the distance, Elizabeth could make out the Tower.

Tom read her thoughts. "You are not for the Tower," he muttered. "I told you: you are not under arrest, only to be taken into custody."

"Where?" she blurted.

When the boat docked outside Edward's townhouse, Anne Stanhope strolled idly down the launch. She measured Harr's urine stained gown and Elizabeth's bloodied lip in a single sneer.

"No room at the inn," she said coolly and pointed for Tom to continue down river.

Charles Brandon appeared even less pleased to see them as Tom forced everyone to disembark at Brandon's London residence. Tom had the sense to appear sheepish under the duke's critical gaze.

"Your sister is bleeding," he observed.

"Not of my doing," Tom shrugged. Elizabeth swayed a little as she walked up the gang plank to the green. Brandon tried to steady her, but she shook off his hand.

"Lissie, let me help you," Brandon said as gently as he could.

"Do not touch me. Do not touch my boy," Elizabeth shook violently. "Any one touches my son, and I will tear their face away with my teeth." But once inside, she lost the feeling in her legs, and they gave way beneath her.

"Charles, what is all the—" Catherine Brandon swept down the main staircase at precisely the wrong time to see Elizabeth laid low on the plush carpet, battered and clinging to a weeping child. "Charles?" she whispered. "Charles?" Catherine raised her voice. "What have you done?"

Elizabeth had the sense of her body leaving the floor and watched the frescoed ceiling pass over her. She remembered this sort of weightlessness, when she had been too young and too stupid to run from Cromwell when he trapped her in that dark room years ago. Now, she allowed herself to be herded along velvet padded hallways until she found herself in a simple room. An unadorned bed. A chest. A pathetic little fire burning in the iron grate.

Harr flew between her skirts when the door slammed behind them.

"I don't like those men," he said with conviction.

"They're mean old goats, that's for sure." Elizabeth swayed momentarily with the shock of losing everything in less than an hour. Then she drew her shoulders back. Her diamond, sewn inside a secret pocket, poked against her belly. She might play her cards right, yet. Dear God, if I make it through this night, she told herself, I will skewer my brothers' balls and send them to Wiltshire for Christmas.

She wiped her eyes, smoothed her hair, and decided to set Harr to rights. Elizabeth pulled a washing basin down from a small table and set it on the ground near the fire.

"Stand here, Harr," she ordered as she plopped him in the bowl. Carefully, she worked the soiled linen over his bruised head and flung the cloth in the fireplace. Harr whimpered as she poured cold water over him.

"I'm sorry love," Elizabeth said. "But we have to smarten you up." After she had rinsed him, she wrapped him in the wool blanket from the bed.

"Can we go home?" he asked through chattering teeth. "Will Papa find us?"

Harr's large eyes peered out from the blanket layered round and round his face. Elizabeth took a deep breath and told the most audacious lie of her life.

"Oh, for certain, my little black lamb."

After she nestled Harr into bed, careful not to disturb the growing bump on the back of his head, Elizabeth washed herself in cold water. She helped herself to a linen shift in the chest and made the chest into her chair. Her shoulders hunched over as she turned the diamond over and over in hands. Oh, how she used to hate that rock. Then the gem indulged her vanity. Then it was her security. Now, it was all she had left.

A crisp knock on the door startled her. For lack of a better, more immediate hiding place, she simply sat on jewel.

Catherine Brandon entered with a serving girl, who juggled a pitcher, a glass, and lumps of cloth. Catherine nodded for the girl to set everything down on the table. Her wary brown eyes remained blank until the girl closed the door behind her.

"I cannot think what to say," Catherine began. "Tomorrow morning, I shall have you moved into my rooms. You dropped your quilts and things, I thought you would want them. Oh, and Sir Thomas Wyatt said you should have this. I cannot think how he came by it."

Elizabeth recognized Cromwell's summer overcoat, lined with silk instead of fur. Her stomach knotted and the baby went still. Catherine wordlessly passed the robe to Elizabeth, letting her speak first. She balled up the black fabric and squeezed it to her ribs.

"I honestly thought we had more time. I never thought…"Elizabeth stopped herself. Why was she saying these things to Suffolk's wife? "I never thought things could fall apart so quickly." She decided to finish the sentence.

"Bit of malmsey?"

"This is no time for small measures."

Catherine filled the glass to the brim and snuck a small sip before passing it on to Elizabeth. She made a place for herself on the chest. Elizabeth wished she would not sit so close; the duchess's wispy figure made her pregnant outline look dumpy.

"Lissie…"

"No sense apologizing," Elizabeth said between sips. "We cannot help but be married to the men we are married to." Without realizing it, Elizabeth nestled the silk lining against her neck. Sandalwood. Cinnamon. Cloves.

"You loved him," Catherine observed softly, almost surprised. Why was the notion so surprising? Love could not always be sweet and soft. "Well, I always thought you did," she said at length. "Some men wear power in the same way a woman wears beauty. Can't help but be drawn to them, possessed by them."

Elizabeth let the wine warm her cheeks and numb her nerves until she could be sure hysteria was unlikely. Elizabeth passed the glass back to Catherine and buried her hands in her face. "Pity's sake, just tell me how it happened. Tell it once and tell it fast before my boy wakes up."

While crickets chirped and Harr breathed deeply, Catherine laid the scene for Elizabeth: Cromwell had not even the chance to sit down before he was arrested. Suffolk spat, "traitor!" and tore into Cromwell's chain of office. The Tower Guard dragged him away, and he screamed his innocence up and down the Thames.

Elizabeth heard the story as if it were some sort of unfortunate event that had befallen another family; these things do not happen to me and mine, she thought. Just as the silence was about to enfold, Elizabeth pulled her hands away from her face.

"What happened to his brooch, his...ring?" Elizabeth could not quite manage "wedding ring."

Catherine flushed from the lace of her collar up to her hood. "They took the ring. The King wanted that ring, so they took it."

For some reason, Elizabeth thought that was the worst part of the story. She self-consciously pulled at the emerald on her finger. Until that moment, she had not quite believed Cromwell was really gone. After Catherine left, Elizabeth snuggled around Harr, pulling them together with the robe. In his sleep, Harr murmured, "Papa." She watched him and waited for the baby to start moving inside her again.

V.

Cromwell made up his mind to not make it an easy task for his jailers. What, was he to play the part of a stupid, glassy eyed cow led to slaughter? It took four men to pin him down as the treasurers took his cross of St. George and his wedding ring. Once the ring slipped off his finger, the fight slipped from his heart. Until he realized where they were taking him.

"No," he shied away from the iron bars of the cell. He dug his heels into the slick, granite floors of the Tower. "No!" The word came out like a protest but ended as an entreaty. Before him, he saw the same cell in which he cross-examined Bishop Fisher as the old man cupped at leaking rain water. Only a few years later, George Boleyn sat in the same cage. Hysterical and snot faced, he had defended himself against incest as Cromwell good-naturedly patted his back.

"No!"

The guards braced their weight as they tossed him face first and locked the door behind them, even as Cromwell rushed for the last hint of freedom. He knotted his arms through the bars, resting his forehead against the cool metal. You're done for this time, Tom, he thought. A thin band of pale flesh stood out on his ring finger. While his hands weathered under the elements and the harsh ink of administration, his wedding ring sheltered a thin strip of skin, so that it stood out white and pure. Henry might take his emerald, Henry might kill him, but the King could not steal his family away.

Cromwell sank against his cell door. He studied the emptiness where the ring used to sit. He supposed now was the time he ought to take account of his life. He thought about his sisters, when he could smell Walter in their hair. Sometimes he hated them for not fighting off Walter. He remembered waking amidst straw and hay (he felt safer sleeping with the horses) and hearing Walter's boots stomp to his sisters' room. But he could not remember reaching for a smithee's hammer. Yet, he must have swung at Walter, and Walter must have been atop one of his sisters, because he recalled her screaming at him: "You killed Pa! Oh, Tom, how could you kill Pa?"

As night fell, and Cromwell shivered in the Tower's darkness, he wondered if he had ever been cold in Italy. Probably not. After two years of fighting, Il Capitano noticed that the slight, dark haired English boy was uncommonly good at numbers. Too valuable to die, he moved Cromwell off the field and onto the supply lines. And a Medici banker had watched him with an abacus and coins, told him: "Go to Florence. Go to Venice. There, you can learn how to make money off of money."

Cromwell's eyes adjusted to the dark and he made out a worn writing desk. He thought of his post in Cardinal Wolsey's chambers. He had sat over his work, drafting contracts and counting money for Wolsey. Stupidly, he had been always waiting for the Cardinal to ask after his wife and family. But Wolsey never did. So Cromwell could never tell him: while we have been placating the Boleyns, my wife, my little girls died.

For a moment, Cromwell wished Death would come and smother him then and there, before King Henry had the privilege. He had been unable to protect his sisters, Bess, his daughters. And his vanity had gotten him arrested, left Lissie and Harr to fend for themselves. What good is a man if he cannot protect his family? Cromwell thought a man should not be able to sink this low and still live.

An eerie glow penetrated the small cell, despite the fast setting sun. Cromwell used the desk to hoist himself up to window. Yellow and orange dots pock marked the perimeter around a house. His house. The heart and soul of his enterprise. From the counting rooms of Austin Friars, Cromwell balanced the price of wool and grain, made sure that the English court ran as smoothly and efficiently as the finest Swiss banks. He watched in mute horror as the torches surrounded his house, and then parted to make way for a train of wagons.

Suffolk, Gardiner, bloody Edward Seymour. Scavenging his home. How much of his possessions would make their way to the royal treasury, Cromwell could not guess. But the thought of Suffolk's thick, stupid hands touching tapestries from Constantinople, and Gardiner ripping down the latest in Flemish painting…

"Oh, Christ, my boys," Cromwell whispered. Richard and Gregory, beset by a mob. Richard could throw a fist with the best…but Gregory? Cromwell had gone out of his way to ensure Gregory would be nothing like his father: gentle, scholarly, the sort of gentry who only knew to pick up a pen, not a sword. What if the rabble stormed in, and dragged Gregory out? What if Richard stuck a blade in one of the king's agents?

He let out slow, guttural moan and slid down to the floor. He had lost his family. Again. He dared to hope that Elizabeth and Harr might seek shelter with her brothers; she was still a Seymour after all. But when his sisters died, they entrusted their children to a prodigal brother they barely knew. Cromwell doubled over with stomach spasms.

"Christ have mercy. My children." He rocked for a few moments, less with tears and more with dry heaves. Then the delicious irony caught him off guard. A wave of mad laughter broke through. To have lived through two summers of Italian slaughter, winters in the Alps, not to mention Walter. He had survived the fall of Wolsey, More, the Boleyns. Thirty thousand Yorkshire men calling for his severed head.

But in the end, it was a dim witted, pouting little girl who would end the life of Thomas Cromwell. The King of England, God's representative on Earth, head of this laughable Church of England, had decided Cromwell needed to die. Because Henry wanted to marry a stupid chit who could be tumbled for little more than a few new ribbons. The more Cromwell tried to steady himself, the more he laughed. He scarcely noticed his door open and close as the guards came to light the candles.

Eventually, Cromwell made it to the bedside. He knelt, trying to pray. Finally, he gave up. He unbuttoned his vest and hung it off one of the bedposts. Cromwell paused as he turned down the linen. Sighing, he stripped off his linen undershirt, the one with the intricate blockwork, of which Elizabeth had been so proud. He carefully folded the shirt on the desk, careful not smudge it with grime.

He would need a clean shirt to die in.

VI.

Stephen Gardiner's path had ended in the clergy. But, Edward wondered if the Bishop had missed his calling altogether and belonged in an acting troupe. Certainly, the Bishop was putting on quite a performance in Westminster as he strut up and down the rows of Parliament, bellowing about Thomas Cromwell.

"My Lords, I am come here to introduce a Bill of Attainder against Thomas Cromwell on a charge of treason." Gardiner paused to admire the rich purple train behind him. "Lord Cromwell, whom His Majesty has raised from a very base and _low_…" Gardiner drew out the "o" rather long. Well, perhaps it was for the best that Gardiner left the theatre to proper actors.

Edward sat wedged between Charles Brandon and Richard Rich. Just next to Tom, Surrey rubbed his temples, sometimes dozing, sometimes inspecting his cuticles. Edward did not think Surrey indifferent, he just assumed Henry Howard was still sweating out last night's brandy.

"Being a detestable heretic," Gardiner continued. "He is utterly disposed to set and sew common sedition…"

A bead of sweat quaked down Edward's neck. Ever since Cromwell's fall, Gardiner was everywhere, watching everyone. Three more Lutheran preachers had been swept up. Edward fidgeted; he needed to tell Anne to tell their friends to mind their words and their books.

"As the Viceregent for religion, supposed to oversee religious reform, Cromwell has without your Majesty's knowledge, licensed heretics to preach and teach…"

Ever since Cromwell's arrest, the reins of power slipped through Edward's fingers before he every really had the chance to use them. I should be the one prancing up and down Parliament, crucifying Cromwell, Edward thought. Not this slithering Papist. Edward had naturally assumed he would occupy Cromwell's position as chief advisor. And then he walked into the king's closet this morning to find Henry and Gardiner, head to head, in deep theological debate.

You cannot turn wine into blood, you cannot turn bread into flesh. There are no Popes, no Purgatory in the Gospel. Personally, Edward thought there was not much discussion to be had.

"My Lords, we have evidence that on the night of March the 31st, in the Parish of St. Peter the Poor, Lord Cromwell did arrogantly defend these heretic preachers…"

Edward cast a sidelong glance at Brandon. The night before, he had accompanied the duke and the king's treasurers to cart off Cromwell's goods. Brandon had taken one look at the carpets, gilded paneling, and then smashed a club in the walls. Brandon shouted something about Cromwell being so arrogant as to lay his floors with the sort of carpets that noblemen would hang on their walls.

Edward had told his liverymen to save as many of the paintings as they could, and now his study overflowed with art from the span of Europe. He decided Henry would not miss them on the inventory. While Brandon sacked Rome, Edward went to the counting room. In all of Cromwell's houses it was the same story: fires that burned too bright for summer, missing documents, half-charred books in the fire place. Gregory and Richard were apprehended half way between London and the southern coast but could offer no better explanation than "London grew too hot."

Worse yet, vast sums were missing from Cromwell's purse. The King had placed Edward in charge of auditing the balance sheets, and Edward could not account for at least half of the bullion that Cromwell would have kept at the ready. Edward also found it very strange that Elizabeth's gold from her estates, and that damned diamond, were conspicuously absent.

Someone had tipped off Cromwell's people. Edward stared long enough at Thomas Wyatt to force the poet to look at him, then glanced away.

"He declared that if the King did turn away from Reform, he would not turn. And if the King did turn and all his followers, then he would stand in the field with his sword in hand." Gardiner swirled back around, still enamored with his purple train. "And he took out his dagger and said: 'thrust me to the heart that I should not live for the quarrel.'"

Gardiner's slick, amphibian eyes met Edward's, then slid away. They shared a look that lasted only a moment, but in the blink of an eye, Edward saw everything so clearly: Cromwell had never been the obstacle. The only thing standing between Edward and Lord Protector was Gardiner and the Catholic queen he would put on the throne at all costs. While the bishop strut up and down the rows and Brandon shouted "Traitor!", Edward realized only too late that he had put the wrong man in the Tower.

After Parliament disassembled and Henry retreated to his closet, Edward played a lazy game of dice with Brandon and Sir Francis Bryan. Surrey dozed on and off in a corner chair. Gardner eyed Edward's wagers for a moment.

"You are too profligate," he judged.

And you are too backwards and useless, Edward thought. Instead, he said: "Am I mistaken? Is this a Sunday? Are you to give us a sermon?"

Nettled, Gardner tucked his soft, spongy neck into his collar. "Whatever is the delay with His Majesty? The evidence is irrefutable against that heretic. Have done the bill of attainder, sign it, and tie that lanky bat to the stake," he huffed.

Surrey opened one eye, then another. "Perhaps your Grace," he said slowly. "If Mr. Cromwell wrote the laws under which he is accused, let us assume he had wit enough not to break them." He spoke at Gardner but observed Edward.

Gardner tracked Edward's dice. "How does your sister?"

"What concern is she of yours?" Edward's shoulders stiffened.

Gardner blankly stared at him. "All the souls of all of His Majesty's subjects are my concern. Tell me, my Lord Hertford, a bitch lies down with other dogs, does she not come out with fleas?"

Edward's fist clenched over his dice. "You tongue trips over itself. You are speaking of the Prince of Wales' aunt."

"Perhaps upon further investigation-"

"You bring my sister under suspicion?"

"She is…she is of interest," Gardiner replied coolly.

Come after a Seymour, Edward thought, and I will feed your pious liver to my hawks.

"Charles! Lord Hertford!" Henry's unmistakable sharp bellow rang through the halls.

"Pray the verdict is to your liking, Mr. Seymour," Surrey said mildly.

Edward ignored the impertinence of Surrey's informality and followed Brandon to the king's closet. Henry stood, heaving as he tried to yank a ring from his finger. It appeared that the royal fingers were too robust for Cromwell's signet ring.

"God damn it, come on, come on," Henry grunted as he tugged harder and harder at the ring. He flipped his hair out of his eyes. "I am annulling your sister's marriage to Cromwell. I will not allow a traitor, a heretic to call himself uncle to my son."

"My sister is very much pregnant with the fruits of the marriage," Edward began. "Some might wonder on what grounds-"

Henry shoved his fist into a tankard of wine and attempted to work the ring off that way. "Duress, coercion," he said distractedly. "The marriage was never valid. Our little Lissie never consented. She begged, pleaded not to marry him, as I recall…vividly, actually. Those sweet lips said, 'yes,' but in her mind and heart, she refused."

"A wise decision," Brandon said.

"Don't patronize me, Charles!" Henry barked. With one last pull, Henry loosened the ring. "Ha! Ha! Here it comes!" He laughed triumphantly as his hand emerged, stained and dripping with wine. He regarded Brandon and Edward momentarily before pitching the gilded tankard at his lords. The container socked Edward in the ribcage, but most of the liquid splashed across Brandon's face. While Edward regained his breath, he admired as the duke stared straight ahead as if nothing had happened.

"I received your figures, my Lord, and they do not add up!" Henry's wet, sticky hand grabbed at Edward's silk collar. "I placed you in charge of administering Cromwell's estate. Where is the rest of the money? Do you take me for some fool? I looked the other way for years while that black badger skimmed royal revenue and accepted bribes. My lord," Henry hissed into Edward's ear. "Find the rest of Cromwell's revenues, or else join him in his new accommodations."

Henry slicked back his hair with fingers still damp with wine. He studied the duke momentarily "Is something amusing Charles? You find it light that I have lost my most faithful servant?" He sniffed.

"Mr. Cromwell was nothing more than a lying little asp," Brandon corrected. He wiped at his face. "I am only pleased his treachery has been exposed before Your Majesty was further deceived."

"Hmm." Henry seemed briefly comforted. He shoved the ring in his vest. "Edward, give your sister the happy news that she is a newly single woman. She has the leave of her king to marry whom she pleases. But acquire her ring, the one Cromwell gave her as a wedding gift. I want to give it to my kitten." Henry sighed and his face softened at the thought of his teenage mistress.

"And the…queen?" Brandon almost choked on the word.

"Send her away for a while," Edward suggested. He wanted Henry to know that no other councilor was more attuned to the king's will than Edward Seymour. "Send her to Richmond for her health and pleasure." He sincerely hoped Henry would let the German princess live. "I think it sufficient that as head of the Church, you can annul your own union." And avoid another dead queen, he thought. "But to be more diplomatic, we should find proof the marriage was never consummated."

"Send a deputation to Mr. Cromwell. Demand of him written evidence supporting my annulment. Doubtless he remembers how often I spoke to him of how my nature abhors that woman," Henry spat.

Edward's jaw clenched. Anne of Cleves had earned Henry's contempt. If she lived even an hour longer than Cromwell, she would be the luckiest woman in Christendom.

VII.

For a dead man, Thomas Cromwell took an awfully long time to die. The day of his arrest, word slipped down the Thames. Then, the next boat to Calais carried the news across the Channel. Within two weeks, every canal lined street in the Low Countries knew that Henry VIII had run mad again and was about to spill more blood so he could marry another woman.

Christina of Milan watched the rain trickle down the colored glass pane. No hunting today. She slid out of her window seat. One of her ladies had left an unfinished game of cards on the table. The young duchess flipped over a few cards and quickly lost interest. She glanced around her room, strewn with black damask and velvet, and wondered that she could be a widow without ever having been a wife.

"The days are so long when they are filled with black," she sighed. "Suppose I wore a very dark blue…who would know it was not black?"

Her aunt, Mary of Hungary, arched an eye-brow. "You have been married once. You see how it is. Surprised you are so ready to surrender the life of a single woman for the sake of a few crimson gowns." She smiled a little. "God knows Anne of Cleves must be on her knees praying for spinsterhood, instead of the block. Oh, my little Jewel, to think you might have been wedded and bedded by that monster." She patted a space next to her for Christina to sit. "Here, place those embroidery silks and that needle in your fingers, and keep your idle hands out of mischief." Mary watched as Christina made a great production of slumping into the chair across hers. "My Jewel," she said hesitantly. "The counting house is no place for a lady of your stature. Don't let me hear about you poking around there again."

"I like it there," Christina said defiantly. "I like to see the different coins from all over the world, with different likenesses, different weights." She didn't add: and I like to hear stories about Thomas Cromwell.

"My Jewel, a woman must always know how much money flows in and out of her household…God knows she cannot trust her husband to do so. But it is for your steward to bring you the account books, not click the abacus yourself." Mary smiled to let Christina know she was barely in any trouble if at all.

"So," Christina began lightly as she picked up her sewing needle. "Terrible news about Thomas Cromwell. Oh, a right heretic to be sure…but it seems to me he has done nothing worse than-"

"Seems to me someone has been listening to the gossipers in the counting house."

"You are not unsympathetic to his reforms," Christina defended. Mary had always displayed more than a passing interest in Luther, but she hedged her wagers and still clutched a rosary.

"Careful," Mary said bluntly. "You talk too lightly about things you know not."

"Well, I don't see why Master Cromwell must die just because King Henry would like another wife!" Christina burst out. She shoved her sewing aside. "Sometimes I believe Master Cromwell saved my life, so why should I not concern myself with his?" She had never met the peculiar minister, but she could not shake the feeling that they were friends in one way or another.

Ever since he had sent her a discreet message that Christina would never have to worry about stepping foot on English soil, she had made it her mission to comb every detail of his mysterious life. Some rumors had him as a mercenary, a trader, a trickster. Some of the bankers swore they watched him sneak into a Papal banquet. And when she shyly asked what he looked like, men who had known him in Venice, in Florence told her the same thing: deep-set, sad blue eyes, raven black hair, strangely handsome in his own way.

"You always tell me that if a woman wishes to govern on her own, she needs to surround herself with talent, not noble titles," Christina added. "Suppose I were to write to King Henry, express my…concern-"

Mary's hand whipped out and caught Christina's braid. She yanked it just hard enough to command attention but not administer pain.

"These are the affairs of kings. Understand that. Remember Master Cromwell in your prayers and leave it there."

Christina rolled away to sulk in the window seat. What a gloomy summer in Brussels, she thought. Grey-green rainwater poured down the window without end. She closed her eyes, listening to the storm and imagined an extraordinary life filled with adventure, danger, wealth, intrigue. Even love.

VIII.

Catherine Parr came calling with her sister, Anne. Together with the Duchess of Suffolk, they pet Elizabeth, cooed sympathies and forced her to eat sweets.

In other words, they treated Elizabeth as if she were already a widow.

"My husband is not yet dead," she reminded them. They sat in Catherine Brandon's rose garden. The other women were dressed in cool summer beige, but Elizabeth twitched in a borrowed dressing gown. She knew how she looked: messy braid, purple stains under her eyes. She fended off another conciliatory caress and launched off the bench to pace around a clover patch.

"Well, what news Cate?" Elizabeth asked. "What is the mood in the City?"

"Oh, no one wants to seem to penitent or proud at the fall of the Lord Privy Seal," Catherine Parr sipped her wine thoughtfully. "I think many are certain that your husband might yet survive and escape charges."

"He does have that habit," Elizabeth sighed. "Surviving, I mean." She nudged a pebble with a slipper. "I don't suppose you have any word of how he fares in the Tower?" She kept her voice flat. Somehow she did not want anyone to know how she missed him. Or how her hands reached for him at night, only to grab at borrowed sheets.

"Utterly unapologetic," the duchess answered. Catherine Brandon smiled. "I do believe my husband is at a loss of what to do to with him."  
"That is his way." Elizabeth could not begin to explain how Cromwell really went about making his amends. She changed the subject quickly. "Nan, how does the bride-to-be?

Anne flushed deeply. She had maneuvered her way into Katherine Howard's service, but Elizabeth hardly faulted her. Was it so many years ago that she passed Anne Boleyn her wine, while she cast another eye on her sister's rising fortunes?  
"She squeaks whenever the king arrives to give her presents and jewels." Anne dropped her voice low. "But she frets when he leaves. I don't think she meant to be the cause of so much fuss. She forbids anyone to mention Cromwell in her presence because it saddens her, and she wants nothing sad or dull around her."

"And the queen?"

"She took faint at the news of her annulment," Anne said at length. "Personally, I think it was more relief that she was not bound for the Tower. _Yet_, anyway."

"Nan, don't be dramatic," her sister said.

Anne dug her hands into the gold chains around her waist. She fidgeted and tugged at herself until her sister snapped:

"Oh, out with it, Nan!"

"Lissie," Anne started uncertainly. "There's something you should know-"

"Stop it, Nan. Lissie has enough burdens."

Elizabeth held up a hand. "Nan, if you have something to say..."

"It's about Gardiner. Rumor has it that your name has surfaced. Lissie, he means to investigate-"

"Me? For what?" Elizabeth cried.

"There's talk that you have openly denied not only the doctrine…but God and the Holy Spirit itself," Anne whispered.

All three women trained their eyes on Elizabeth.

"You talk too loosely, Elizabeth," Cate admonished. "You always have."

"I won't mold myself into form with another's version of the world!" As soon as Elizabeth said it, she realized that was exactly the sort of sentiment Cromwell might say.

"I'd advise you to be as supple as the wind."

Elizabeth's head shot up at the sound of Edward's voice. His boots thrashed through carefully groomed patches of clover and pansies, the gravel path apparently having been to circuitous for his taste.

"God's sake, Elizabeth!" Edward stared her up and down. "You appear to fare worse than Cromwell." He glanced around at Elizabeth's company. "All of you: go. I want a moment with my sister."  
Elizabeth thought it something for the son of a country knight to order the Duchess of Suffolk out of her own garden. Catherine folded her delicate arms across her ribs and narrowed her eyes.

"Lissie, have your audience if you like. Besides, I bring you not unhappy tidings: you are free."

"Harr and I may return home?" Elizabeth's heart leapt into her throat.

"Hardly," Edward chuckled. "You are free of Cromwell, I mean. His Majesty annulled your marriage this morning," he said simply.

"That's not…possible. My Lord," Cate insisted. "Lissie has given him a son, with another soon to be."  
"And the Dowager Princess, Catherine of Aragon gave His Majesty many little corpses. Marriage is a flexible thing in England." Edward smiled a little. "Cromwell himself saw to that."

Elizabeth knew everyone was waiting for her to shout, weep, prostrate herself. But she felt nothing. She supposed she understood the Spanish queen too late. A piece of paper could not make or unmake a marriage. She thought about the nights she lay with Cromwell's sweat still glistening on her skin. Nights when they fell asleep with her hand in his. Days when they fought, lusted and loved.

I have felt this man's hips between my thighs, born his son, Elizabeth thought. You cannot tell me that by scribble of the king's signature, the last four years never happened.

"Well, the law is what pleases the king," Edward said, half-reading her thoughts. "And it pleases the king that the Prince of Wales' aunt never married Thomas Cromwell," he explained patiently. "You are required to surrender that." He pointed to her emerald ring. "His Majesty wishes to give it to Mistress Howard."

Elizabeth hadn't the fight left in her to do otherwise. She slipped the ring from her finger and held it out to Edward, forcing him to come to her if he wanted it.

"Just take the damned thing and give me some peace." She challenged Edward with a stare that she won. He bowed quickly to the other ladies and stamped off, not before calling over his shoulder:

"This is what you always said you wanted, isn't it Lissie? To be free of Cromwell?"

Cate let out the breath she was holding. "Pray God this little strumpet makes herself worthy of the crown she's stolen. Hasn't she any idea how dearly it has cost others?"

Elizabeth studied the faded band of flesh where her ring used to sit. She wondered if she had been as vain and stupid as the Howard girl when she was sixteen. Elizabeth concluded she most likely was.

IX.

"Master Kingston, how is our prisoner today?" Edward asked the constable of the Tower as they walked towards Cromwell's cell. The damp, miserable air tickled Edward's nostrils. He inhaled the power, the fear of the place.

"Rarely have I seen a creature in such a wretched state." Kingston shook his head; clearly, he expected a braver show from Cromwell. "All through the night, his jailers tell me he rages and thrashes, calls out in several different languages."

"Something about this place…" Edward began the thought but chose not to finish it as a scream echoed. He turned to Kingston questioningly.

"No, we have orders not to rack him. His Majesty likes to keep his famous prisoners intact for the axe."

"What has Master Cromwell said during his midnight confessionals?" Edward hoped he did not appear too interested. But, with each day that passed, Cromwell's nerves frayed a little more, and Edward worried the secretary's prodigious memory might set to work and name names.

Kingston waved his hand dismissively; as constable of the Tower, he had seen queens, priests, and pretenders mount the scaffold. Not much could impress him. "Oh, nothing. He rambles in Latin, Italian, German, French, even gutter Putney." Kingston paused before the door to Cromwell's cell. "Who is Walter?" he asked suddenly.

"I-I cannot say." Edward's mind fumbled. Did he know a Lutheran priest named Walter? Did Anne? "Why do you ask?" he pressed cautiously.

"No reason," the constable smiled at Edward's obvious discomfort. "It is only that the jailers tell me that Cromwell sometimes shouts aloud the name, as if in a fevered sleep." Kingston swung the iron grate open and gestured for Edward to enter.

All of the crying from the past nights seemed to have clarified Cromwell's resolve. His shirt was open at the collar and Edward could see the sinewy muscles of Cromwell's chest writhe as he hurled himself around from his desk and came at Edward with claws drawn, ready for a fight.

Cromwell threw his chair away with one hand while deftly snaring Edward's doublet with another.

"What's the meaning of this, you purse mouthed, ungrateful little cunt!" he snarled. "Were it not for me, you and your brother, Tom, would still be torturing kittens in Wiltshire!"

Edward eased Cromwell back with the palm of his hand and not without some trepidation. Cromwell was one of those men who appeared even stronger and more powerful the thinner he became. He was all bone and muscle knotted like ropes.

"Peace, Cromwell. I bring some grave news…not of your death, which is inevitable. But something else."

"If you harmed one hair on my boys' heads-"

"Your son Gregory and your nephew Richard are in fine form. They're under house arrest, to be sure, at your London home, but they will stay healthy young men so long as you make yourself agreeable to the king's will."

"What have you done with Lissie?" Cromwell demanded.

Edward smirked at the flawless lead-in. "Some developments since your confinement. I would not worry so much about Lissie or the boy anymore."

"She's my wife, what have you done-"

"No, no she is not. In fact, according to His Majesty, your marriage was never valid."

Cromwell's laugh came out pitched and cracked. "On what grounds?"

Edward narrowed his eyes and went in for the blow. He made himself a seat on Cromwell's desk.

"Why a lack of consent, of course," he said smoothly.

Cromwell opened his mouth, then wisely shut it. Edward's arrow had hit its target; Cromwell knew there was something to the charge.

"You cannot feign surprise. Everyone knew you terrorized my sister into marrying you."

"God's sake, Edward, I love her," he murmured.

"I told you before: you are incapable of loving and being loved. You wanted to possess Elizabeth, and so you did. You wanted to marry her because you knew your filthy Putney hands didn't even deserve to touch her. After nights of threatening her, bullying her, it never occurred to you that you might not be called to account?"

"She's my _wife_," Cromwell said, as if that would change anything.

Suddenly, Edward grew tired of the arguing with the lanky bat. "You believe the king, or anyone else for that matter, gives fuck all that they sat through that farce of a wedding, watching you drag Elizabeth by her hair down the aisle?" he snapped. "She was a sweet, happy little thing 'til you got hold of her! Cromwell, everyone knew you were just a rapist masquerading around with the legal title of husband."

"How dare you-"

"I can bring you the papers. I can show you where Elizabeth signed off on the council's findings of duress and coercion. Never have I seen a woman so eager to affix her signature to a document." Edward hoped Cromwell would not sniff out the lie and demand a paper that did not exist.

"No, it wasn't...things were not as you say." For once, the master wordsmith tripped over his own tongue. Cromwell shook his head, his overgrown curls moving in disbelief. He squared his shoulders. "Elizabeth would never do that to Harr, make a bastard out of him."

"Clearly she thinks no father at all would be better than you," Edward smiled as a thought dawned. "As head of the Church of England, His Majesty could grant her a dispensation to marry anyone she wanted. Someone younger, prettier than you. Say your son, Gregory—"

"That's enough!" Cromwell had one hand around Edward's wind pipe. A jailer peered between the bars, and Cromwell stepped politely away from Edward.

"It's over," Edward coughed. "You are finished. Save what is left of your family and make yourself soft as butter to His Majesty's desires." He dusted off his sleeves and turned to leave. "And you can make a fair beginning by drawing up a full account of your estate, where you hid your gold."

"I love her. She's my wife." Cromwell's eyes went from obsidian to blue. For the first time since he'd known that black badger, Edward wondered if Cromwell was finally speaking in truths.

"Well, whatever it was between you two, it's over now." Edward paused at the cell door. "The king will be expecting the report on your finances within the week."

Down the corridor, his path crossed with Charles Brandon. What could the duke possibly want with Cromwell? Edward felt as though Cromwell was his trophy, his prey. It worried him that Henry felt the Lord Privy Seal was too big a task for Edward alone. Worse, that Henry already suspected Edward of Lutheranism and did not trust him with Cromwell's full prosecution.

"Your Grace, a peer of your rank need not concern himself with the confessions of low born smithee," Edward managed. Unfortunately, Brandon stopped to pick up a conversation.

"Sensitive business."

"More sensitive than my sister's marriage bed?"

"More like His Majesty's marriage bed."

Edward checked at that. He had been under the impression that the king was leaving it to him to dispose of the German mare and the minister who brought her here.

"Your Grace takes on many labors."

"Only what the king requests I do. Only what the king _personally _requests," Brandon emphasized.

A great thump and crash saved Edward from having to respond.

"What on earth—"

"Oh, never mind that." Edward waved a dismissive hand. "That's just the sound of Thomas Cromwell hitting the floor." He placed a hand on Brandon's shoulder. "I think you will find Mr. Cromwell much more compliant. Strange how flexible men become once they lose everything."

As he walked away, he cringed. Now Cromwell had nothing to lose, and in Edward's estimation, it made him very dangerous.

Back at Whitehall, Ralph Sadler handed Edward a stack of papers in passing. More than two weeks after Cromwell's arrest and his pages were still clearing out his offices.

"That's all I could find, My Lord," he said shortly.

Edward thumbed through the crusty parchment. He looked at the papers, looked at Ralph. Then he scattered the accounts like snow across the floor.

"That's all, that's all?" Edward mimicked. "There are years worth of loans missing from the records!" he shouted. "Find them, find the gold, or find yourself in the stocks!"

No sooner did Ralph scamper off than another clerk passed off a bundle to Edward.

"More letters of credit, My Lord," he shrugged.

Edward groaned as he flipped through the promissory notes. Once word got out of Cromwell's arrest, a wave of traders and merchants had flooded before Edward, bearing letters of credit they issued to the Lord Privy Seal; all of them signed and sealed by Cromwell. Unfortunately, this latest batch appeared to be just as authentic as the others. Edward had no choice but to pay them out of the silver seized from Cromwell's houses.

He seated himself at Cromwell's old desk and swallowed bile as he adjusted the bookkeeping. Henry would be furious once he saw the revenue dwindle further. He knew the king had been salivating over the thought of snaring all of Cromwell's storied treasure rooms. But truth be told, after Edward paid the salaries due to Cromwell's retainers and honored every note of credit apparently taken out by the Cromwell enterprise, Edward had less and less to bring to Henry. He made a note in margins to be sure to collect in full on the loan made to Sir Francis Bryan.

Edward tidied the figures and sat back to study them. Why would Cromwell ever have needed to take on debt in the first place? He knew these numbers told a story about a delicate web of bankers and traders spanning the whole of Europe, linked by tenuous strands of credit and subtle understandings reached through a handshake and promise to pay. Already, the word from Brussels, Amsterdam, and Antwerp was troubling. Mary of Hungary had sent him several hastened letters, demanding of him personally just what he thought he was doing, and did he not know the hornet's nest he'd stirred up, and what was she to do with an army of panicked Danish merchants who relied on Cromwell for loans and import licenses? He could practically hear the ground creak and moan as the bottom prepared to fall out from under them all.

What took Edward an afternoon to prepare, Henry dismissed with a single glance.

"Where's the rest of it?" the king demanded. His turquoise eyes burned brilliantly, but offered no warmth. He sat alone at his grand dining table, sucking the marrow from veal bones.

"Mr. Cromwell had well over four hundred retainers. I was bound to pay them their month's salary in full," Edward replied.

Henry's greasy fingers balled up the paper Edward had given him and tossed it into the small fire.

"And that explains why money continues to leak from his estate like piss?"

"There are letters of credit that must be paid…"

Henry tested the tip of his knife with the pad of his finger. "You have a keen eye for figures, you always have. But it would seem to me that as the man I entrusted to administer Cromwell's funds, you are out of your depth." Henry pushed the knife point in a little deeper, ignoring the growing drop of blood. "Tell me, how am I to trust you with my son's counsel when you tell me that the richest man in England suddenly has the funds of a country knight? My Lord, you are either incapable or fattening your own pockets."

"Majesty, I-"

"Idiot!" Henry jumped up, wincing as his bad leg took on its full share of weight. "Find the rest of the gold. I don't usually need to warn my men twice."

"Yes, right away, Majesty." As Edward bowed, he realized he sounded just as simpering as Cromwell when he would take a blow to the head and thank Henry for it.

"One more thing, Edward." Henry wiped at the perspiration growing across his forehead from the effort of standing. "I want that diamond. The one Cromwell gave to your sister as a wed—as a betrothal gift. I want my kitten to wear it to our wedding breakfast."

X.

That night, Elizabeth put herself to bed without supper. The few times she dozed, she dreamed about Cromwell. They were in the Tower, and she desperately wanted to let go of his hand, but she couldn't. After she awoke, she made a point of not falling asleep again.

"Please don't leave me, Thomas," she whispered into the humid darkness. At first, Elizabeth thought it was the lack of sleep causing her to see shadows against the wall. But when she sat up on her elbows, the murky form solidified into that of Catherine Brandon. The duchess held a candle to her face and came to sit by Elizabeth's side.

"I overheard my husband tell your brothers that Lord Lisle has been arrested for treason," she murmured.

"What might he have done—except made welcome a homesick princess to her new land?"

Catherine confirmed her worst fears. "Exactly. Lissie, they're rounding up anyone friendly to Anne of Cleves. Lutheran. Papist. And, if Gardiner has been bandying about your name…" Catherine laid her small hand across Elizabeth's belly.

"Lissie, I fear you will not be safe if you stay here."  
"Where else would you have me go?"

"There's a man," Catherine said hurriedly. "He brings me books from across the Channel. He knows people in London. He comes at half past midnight. You be ready with your son."

An hour later, Elizabeth stood in a plain cotton dress, clutching her quilts and linens with Catherine in the brandy cellar. Harr was so tired he almost slept on his feet.

"We're leaving again?" he yawned.

"Yes, my lamb." She combed the tangle of his curls through her fingers. "Your Grace, I have no way to pay for this man's discretion," she admitted.

Catherine patted her pockets. "Do not worry yourself with such things." She smiled to herself. "Sometimes, I think it is a good thing for a woman to have a little money that her husband does not know of." Catherine's head darted up. "Wait, I think that's him."

A shapeless cloak shuffled up to them. Elizabeth supposed a man breathed beneath all those layers of crude wool. He produced a weathered book from the folds of his sleeves. Like some well rehearsed dance, he passed the book to Catherine as she passed him a pouch of silver.

"You are the Lady Cromwell?" His hood bobbed up and down. "You certainly are everything they have said and more. Let us be on our way." His bleached and burned hand reached towards Harr. We need to move quickly. Let me carry the boy."

Before Elizabeth could protest, Catherine lifted Harr onto the man's stooped back.

"You hold tight around his neck," she told him. She turned to Elizabeth. "Trust me and trust him. I promise we will see you to safer lands, one way or another."  
"Your Grace, I don't know what to—"

Catherine held her fingers to Elizabeth's lips, then threw her arms around her. Elizabeth found herself squeezing the duchess back with equal ferocity.

"I will hold them off, for as long as I can," Catherine whispered.

"There's very little time. Your husband's guard will have almost finished changing out the nighttime shift," the man said.

Catherine gave her a final, knowing look that spoke of two women desperately trying to keep their heads above water as plots and events crashed about them. All around Europe, men were hacking one another to death over the question of whether their souls could be saved through faith alone instead of good works. But in that moment, all Elizabeth knew was that sometimes a woman needed to be her own savior. She drew in a deep breath and followed a stranger carrying her son into the blue midnight.

They tracked a maze hewn out of dirt and roots until an opening deposited them into a crumbling chapel. Elizabeth blinked, disoriented. When Harr fidgeted, she laid a hand on his back.

"See sweetheart? Isn't it like when you played with Gregory, and he carried you on his back, carrying you away from evil King Herod, carrying you to Bethlehem?" she told him.

"That's right, my child," the hooded man reassured Harr. "Pretend I am your camel, and you are a wiseman following a star."

Harr nodded and held tighter as the man led them in a zig-zagged pattern through central London. They stopped short to let a wagon pass. The drivers, dressed in the royal livery, belched and laughed. Elizabeth's eyes instinctively tracked their route. As her eyes adjusted to the dark, she realized it was headed to Cromwell's main London house, which rose imposingly out of the night fog. Firelight shown from the window; clearly the house had not been emptied and abandoned. Without thinking, she clutched her guide's elbow and gasped.

"The king will pick that house dry as a carcass," he said bluntly. "But word has it His Majesty keeps Master Gregory and Master Richard under house arrest as collateral, I suppose." When he turned back towards her, her eyes caught a smashed nose in the silvery moonlight.

They made their way to one of the foreign quarters favored by the Hanseatic merchants passing through London. He stopped them in front of a neat but modest townhouse with a stable and courtyard beside it. He pulled Harr down from his back and shooed them behind a haystack.

"Wait here."

Elizabeth watched him as he made a distinctive knock on the door. As it creaked open, a thin ray of candlelight crept through. He jingled the pouch, said something to the innkeeper and disappeared behind the door. During the minutes she waited alone in the dark, she had to wonder what exactly she was doing. Dear God, I've made myself into a fugitive, she thought. And for what? On the slim hope she could bribe a passage before Gardiner arrested her? Or say she made it to the continent—would Kit or an agent of Cromwell's even help her? The stink of treason preceded itself and scattered friends and family to the wind.

"You're his wife?"

Elizabeth almost jumped into the haystack at the startle of a woman holding a lamp between their faces. Her long, weathered face took in Elizabeth.

"You're his wife?" she repeated.

Elizabeth nodded.

"Come in then, but don't you even dare wake a mouse." She herded Elizabeth and Harr into a smoky kitchen. The hooded man sat on a bench. Revealed, Elizabeth saw his face was knotted mess of scar tissue melting into flesh.

"Those were violent days for me, when Thomas More walked around London," he said in answer to her unasked question. His disfigured hands tucked into his sleeves as he clutched a mug.

Someone pushed another mug into her hands. A second woman, maybe thirty, maybe twenty told her, "That's the lightest ale we have. Drink it and take a little bread." The women crossed their arms and measured her up. Finally, the older one said:

"You understand I've rented rooms to three German wool traders, that's half a year's income to me." They stared at Elizabeth, waiting for her to comprehend. She clucked to herself at her own stupidity: even charity had its price in London. She patted the quilts and cloaks under her arm.

"I have money here. I can pay you the missed rents."

As the women watched her, Elizabeth realized they were weighing their odds, deciding if a condemned traitor's wife was worth the gamble.

"Please." She pulled the fabric of her gown taut so they could see how pregnant she was. "Please," she said again. "I am only trying to make passage to Antwerp."

The women nodded between themselves.

"Well, let's see how much you can pay first. Stay here until morning, and we'll see what's to become of you," said the older woman. "You can go now, John."

As he counted out half the silver that Catherine had given him, the woman pushed most of it back to him. "God bless and keep you, John," she murmured. He threw his cloak around him and slid through the door so quietly that Elizabeth barely realized he had gone.

"I'm Mary. This is my daughter, Lucy. Lucy has a girl, she's ten, asleep in the next room. Her name is Charlotte," Mary explained. She pulled out a bench for Elizabeth to sit.

"I used to be Lady Cromwell, but then the king said I was never married to begin with," Elizabeth said wryly. "So, I suppose that leaves me as Elizabeth Seymour—but call me Lissie. Everyone else does." She eased herself down and hauled Harr into her lap. "And this my little black lamb, Harr."

"Things took even worse for you?" Lucy asked as she pushed some buttered bread in front of Elizabeth.

"Bishop Gardiner wants the floors swept clean."

"Child, you will have to run further than Antwerp to escape that vicious dog," Mary whistled through her teeth. "Best book passage to China."

"You live alone here?" Elizabeth asked between mouthfuls.

"I had a husband and sons. Lucy had a husband and sons. Between the Sweat and the drink, they are all gone."

"The City let you keep the inn?"

"Your husband was always good about doling out licenses to widows, so businesses would not fall into disrepair."

As Lucy made porridge for Harr, Elizabeth unworked the seams of her quilts and prayed she had enough embroidered coins to buy Mary's help. She pushed the gold to the center of the table.

"That's a worthy sum," Mary remarked. "You can stay here for as long as it takes you to secure crossing to the continent. But, the ports are blockaded to keep Anne of Cleves in and Duke William out. If you mean to bribe your way to the Low Countries, then you will need a small fortune."

Since they were only women and a toddler in that cramped room, Elizabeth worked her hand into her cleavage without a care for her modesty. With some struggle, she pulled out her diamond. Lucy stopped stirring the porridge long enough to gape, while Mary snatched up the jewel and held it to the firelight.

"I am not without fortune," Elizabeth allowed herself a small smile.

"Jesus, Mary, and Joseph," Lucy whispered.

Mary shot her a worried look. "I am sorry my lady to be so blunt, but money is a harsh business. If you need to turn this gem to ready cash, then the only men in England who could buy it in whole are the king—and begging your pardon—Lord Cromwell."

"But say I have the stone cut down?"

"That's the most famous stone in London." Lucy wagged a porridge sopped spoon at Elizabeth. "If you take it to a master jeweler, word will get out, and then you will never make it to the Low Countries."

"You cannot possibly think to make the crossing in your condition." Mary pointed to her belly. "Listen, Lucy and I have helped each other bear and bury our children. If you allow yourself to be storm tossed at sea for a week or two, I can guarantee that either you or the unborn child will not make it to new shores."

"But, if I stay here, it won't take long for Bishop Gardiner to round me up as well." She hugged her elbows and put on a brave face. "If I lose my life, better it be on my terms, protecting my children—not on the whim of a suspicious man."

"I was afraid you might say as much," Mary sighed. "No disrespecting your high station, but you will have to sleep in the kitchen tonight." She pointed to a straw pallet in the corner. "If I take you in, I need to throw my tenants out, and I won't toss these men out on their ear in the middle of the night. Remember: no one can know you are here. The moment anyone suspects, I will turn you into Bishop Gardiner myself. But stay in the house, stay discreet, and perhaps we can introduce you to the right sort of people."

After Harr finished his porridge, she spread out her quilts on the pallet and beckoned him to curl up beside her. Once he fell asleep, she eased her arm from under his head and sat against the wall. She still had Cromwell's cloak balled in her hands. Thomas, the last time I saw you wear this, we spoke of leaving while we could, and now it's too late, she thought.

"This is all your fault," she said to the fabric. Hot, angry tears stung her eyes. "I used to be sister to the queen of England, and now I am asleep on the floor of a stranger's kitchen with our son. And it's all your fault, Thomas. Because you had to make yourself a martyr over a German preacher and a German princess." she hissed. Elizabeth balled her fists up so tight the skin whitened. On instinct, her fists jabbed at the lumpy fabric. Harr stirred.

"Mama?" he whispered.

Elizabeth swallowed and swallowed until she could be sure her voice would not break. "Just, just go back to sleep, my love."

She tucked the cloak around him, burying him in the fabric. As his breathing slowed and deepened, Elizabeth fought off more tears. She held her breath, bit her tongue. Exhausted, she finally gave over to stupid, little girl crying that would not stop. She cried for herself, for Cromwell and Gregory, whose lives had been a parade of losses. And she cried for Jane, who slipped out of this life before she ever really had a chance to live it. Elizabeth hugged her ribs as she tried to keep her sobs quiet.

"Mary, Mother of God, help me," she gasped. "Please, Mary Mother of God, I need your help." In that moment, it felt good, felt right to believe in a grace that could transcend cruelty. It felt good to cry out to a mother. She repeated her Ave Maria, surprised how quickly the prayer rolled off her lips. Elizabeth took Harr's plump foot and squeezed it in her palm for reassurance. When the king had told her to marry Cromwell, wear his necklace, and look damn happy in the process, Elizabeth was sure her own life had been stolen out of her own hands. But as of tonight, she had to wonder if perhaps her fate had not opened up wide as the sky. She had no idea where she was going, or what she would do when she got there, but for the first time in four years, with no husband, king, or brothers, she realized she could reclaim the present, so she could make her own future.

Elizabeth nestled her face into Harr's neck. "We are not nobodies, Harr," she mouthed into his ear. "We can forge our own path from now on."

Out in the courtyard, a bird dared enough faith to sing while the dawn was still dark.


	27. Final Chapter

A/N: Sorry about the looooonnnggg hiatus. I wasn't sure if there was any interest left in the story, but after several kind reviewers messaged me, I decided to finish what I started.

When the Tower gates slammed behind her, Anne Boleyn prophesized that it would not rain until she was released. Or, was it that the rain would not cease until she was free? Elizabeth could not remember; there had been no sky in those dark days, only Cromwell stretching to the edge of Elizabeth's horizon. Now, as June slogged into July, and the banks of the Thames turned dry and cracked, Elizabeth almost wished Cromwell had said as much when they rowed him under Traitor's Gate: no rain until the king frees his most loyal minister. The present weather would not have made a liar out of Cromwell.

Elizabeth stared up at a sliver of moon through the window in the garret. In the heat of July, perspiration soaked her shift until cloth and flesh became one. Harr threw a sticky arm across her belly, leaving one hand free to jam into his mouth. He murmured in his sleep and suckled his paw. Elizabeth settled back against her pillow and splayed her palms open against the moonlight. She studied the pale band of flesh where her wedding ring used to sit.

"Thomas," she whispered. "Thomas, you have to come back to me."

Harr tossed away from her. He muttered: "Grey-ry."

When the stagnant heat became too much, Elizabeth edged from Harr's embrace and padded down the stairs lured by a brief respite of cooler air. In the simple parlor, Mary and Lucy perched on stools, fanning themselves and pressing cold pewter mugs to their foreheads.

"I have some light cider for a miserable night such as this," Mary offered. Lucy gave up her stool to Elizabeth. She poured a mug and watched as Elizabeth rolled the pewter across her brow.

"It was kind of you to allow my Lotte to brush and braid your hair. She likes to watch its colors change in the sunlight. I hope she did not tax you with her questions. I tell her that you are no princess but that she is not to bother you just the same." Lucy allowed a smile. "She likes you; most people swat her away."

"Of course Lotte likes the lady," Mary snorted. "Lady Cromwell's gold has bought Lotte a doll and put more meat on her table in a few weeks than the child has seen in her life."

Elizabeth was about to ask: are all you City matrons so damn attached to your accounts? Then Elizabeth checked herself. These women were risking their lives to help a traitor's wife run the blockade. Still, Mary and Lucy were generously compensated for their share of the danger. Elizabeth's dwindling purse of coin could testify to that. Instead, Elizabeth turned the subject back to little Lotte.

"She has a talent for dressing hair. When she's older, you ought to call in a favor or two, find her a place in some noblewoman's household," Elizabeth told Lucy. "Perhaps when things settle down, you should send her to stay with me for a bit."

The women shared a strange look. Elizabeth shot one eyebrow up—a habit of Cromwell's that grew on her without her ever having realized it.

"My lady, you did not touch your dinner, nor your supper. This cannot go on," Mary whispered. "It's over. Accept it is over. Thomas Cromwell is finished. But, you must think of your own life ahead and cherish better times to come."

"It is so hot, I cannot breathe, let alone eat," Elizabeth sipped her cider. "How am I to rejoice in a joint of rabbit when my husband is…"

Even in the dark, Elizabeth assumed that Mary rolled her eyes. "Spoken like a woman who has never known a day of hunger in her life," she sighed. "My lady, Lucy and I fear—"

"What? That my gold will run out?" As soon as the words spilled out, Elizabeth wanted to apologize for being so terse and blame the pregnancy and heat.

"Look: you don't have the sense of this at all." Mary put her mug down on the small table. She pointed at Elizabeth. "My lady, you are a widow. If not technically, then in practice. You pat your belly and go around my kitchen each day, musing when Thomas Cromwell will rescue himself with some ingenious scheme. But he is condemned. He will die."

"He is not dead," Elizabeth muttered into her mug. "The days pass. The weeks. And he is not dead. His prosecutors lose their nerve."

"How much longer will you deny the facts?" Mary hissed. Lucy gently touched her elbow, but Mary waived her off. "He is condemned on a Bill of Attainder. What remains is the sentence, which you do not seem to grasp."

Elizabeth drained her cup. "Oh, I see. What, am I not sorry enough for you?"

A bitter chuckle escaped Lucy. "Christ, that's how it goes for widows. If you continue to keep house, tend your children, go to market, then other City wives whisper behind their hands: is she not distraught? Not painting her face with ash or pulling her hair in grief."

"And if you sneak a private moment and weep for all those you loved and lost, then people ask, well does she not know a woman is like as not to bury a husband, a child?" Mary grumbled. "I think a widow can never be sorry enough for some people. So, my lady, you have your boy and the child within you. No one in this house will fault you for dreaming of better days."

Elizabeth realized she understood something about Cromwell only too late. That corpses don't care how they came to be so dead. It is the duty of the living to go on living, who must make sure those left have enough to eat.

"I know I've lost him," Elizabeth whispered. "Yet, I do not believe it." After a silence that almost strangled her, Elizabeth felt compelled to add: "God only knows what is in my heart. As for when I cry for my husband, that is my own affair."

Mary and Lucy nodded and sipped their cider thoughtfully.

Elizabeth chose not to say that if I let loose one tear, then all the others will flow past the dam, and what good am I to Harr if I cannot pick myself up off the floor? When I get to Antwerp, I will scream into a pillow then.

Mary just as good read her thoughts.

"My lady, your husband is dead, and you are very much alive. Make your peace with that, bring forth the child in your belly, and then accept the next available passage across the channel. Because I found a captain eager to reach favorable terms. He wants to sail in a week."

II.

Edward was about ready to pick up an axe and swing blindly into Cromwell's desk. The only compartment to remain locked was a shallow drawer just beneath the writing surface. Please, Edward prayed. Please let that diamond be there. But Edward suspected the gem was not there, that his sister kept it on her person. And where was little Lissie? Edward did not believe Suffolk for a moment that his sister was in confinement, which he supposed was the best excuse the duke could offer to servants who had not seen Elizabeth Seymour in quite some time.

Edward and Anne took up residence in Cromwell's apartments not long after the Lord Privy Seal's spectacular fall from grace. Each night, Edward ordered the servants to throw open all the windows—not on account of the heat. At every corner he caught a hint of cinnamon and sandalwood. And around every corner he feared Cromwell waited for him. Each day, each week that Cromwell breathed, Edward doubted his own resolve, the king's resolve. The Cleves mare had graciously stepped aside, the royal coffers swallowed up what was left of Cromwell's estate, so what more could Henry want? More to the point, why kill Cromwell? Because he was insolent? Because he was a greedy magpie? The fact that Cromwell had not technically broken any law presented a difficulty that no one could answer.

Edward kicked at the Persian rug in frustration. An upturned corner presented an instant answer in the form of a small key. He wondered that Cromwell would leave the key in such an obvious hiding place, and he wondered if that was not because Cromwell had less to hide than everyone thought. When he tried the key, the little drawer groaned open like an exhausted whore.

His fingers grappled blindly at the few small objects. He fished out a weathered Latin prayer book. As Edward flipped the pages, imagining why in the world Cromwell of all people would keep a Book of Hours in Latin, something slipped between the fragile vellum. Three separate locks of hair, each bound with a silk knot. The locks were more or less the same color of ashy blonde. He turned back the front cover and recognized Cromwell's flawless handwriting on sight. Edward studied the names: Bess, Grace, Anne. Beside each name were two dates, and the latter date was the same.

"They all died on the same day," Edward said to no one in particular.

He rummaged around the drawer until his fingers sensed cool metal. He retrieved two simple gold rings bound together on a thin chain. Such a far cry from the emerald signet ring that sat on Cromwell's finger from the day he married Lissie until the day he was arrested. Henry had given up trying to fit the ring on his bloated fingers and since had the jewel re-set on his cane.

Like a child sneaking sweets, Edward shoved his latest discoveries into his vest. Anne Stanhope would want to see these. She took an interest in private business that absolutely did not concern her.

"Anne! Anne!" he called. "You will never guess-"

A maid hurrying past him clutched a soiled skirt. A few others kept close on her heels, probably hoping that if they walked fast enough, he would not question them.

Edward threw open the door to Anne's bedchamber. He surveyed the battle scene: bloody rags, bloody sheets, and a basin containing crimson stained water.

"God Damn you, Anne," he swore under his breath.

Anne Stanhope slapped away the little maid trying to dab her thighs clean. She clasped her robe close with one hand and used the other to haul herself upright.

"It's. Not. My. Fault." Anne drew out each word with great effort.

"What's another little corpse to us?" Edward barked. He kicked at the basin. Blood stained water sloshed onto the carpet. "How many? How many little corpses is that now? Help me count the bastards! What is it now? Ten bloody messes?"

"Eight," Anne corrected through grey lips. "Eight."

"Why do I even have to do with you? Answer me that!" He kicked over the basin. A red tide of water spread over the rug. "Like as not, it was not mine."

"You know I left off Sir Francis months ago," Anne hissed. "I will not suffer the blame for your weakness, the fact that your seed cannot even catch." She settled herself back against a bedpost. "Next time you think to barge through my doors, you will find them locked!"

"If you refuse me, I will annul the marriage and pack you off to a convent."

"Oh, I'd like to see you try." Even pale from blood loss, Anne Stanhope would not shy from a fight. She wanted to gnash her teeth at someone, something. Tonight, Edward decided it would not be him. He turned squarely on his heel.

"One of you sluts fetch the bathing tub," he called. Over his shoulder he regarded his wife. "Clean yourself up, Anne. You look like you've been slaughtering pigs."

Edward stalked to his own bedchamber, which was to say the nursery. Hans Holbein himself had painted a woodland scene over the daffodil yellow walls. Edward hung tapestries over the walls but something stayed his hand from blotting out the meadows, the ponds, the gentle trees.

He pulled a chair next to the open window. From the privy garden below, the ducks quacked in time with the crickets. Perhaps the same force that prevented him from painting over the nursery also kept him from serving those ducks for supper. In the moonlight, Edward studied his latest scavenge from the wreckage of Cromwell's enterprise. From beyond the hedges, he made out the drunken boasts of his brother, Tom, and the crackling laugh of Sir Francis Bryan. A woman's squeal pierced the nighttime, then a yelp. Edward could not be sure if it was a rape. Or, maybe his brother just caught the woman unawares.

On that night, when the heat became thick and still like a wall, as Gardiner roasted Lutherans alive, and Tom Seymour tumbled every passerby with two legs and female parts, Edward was quite sure that the wrong man was in the Tower.

The best he could hope for was that Elizabeth would allow some sense into her nonsensical head and accept the passage with the captain that he pushed in her way.

III.

Catherine Brandon never made much of it when Charles failed to return for days on end. She had taught herself to wait. He once told her that he might make her cry, even when he did not mean to do so. She allowed him to break her heart once, and thereafter, she learned the wifely habit of looking the other way.

And so in her library, Catherine waited. As the sun sank in the dim sky, she studied her hands, the black lace against white fingers. Catherine actually thought black suited most people better than any buttery satin or blue silk. Perhaps Cromwell had been more fashion forward than anyone credited him.

At the sound of Brandon's footsteps, she straightened her shoulders and squeezed the soft belly of the wriggling spaniel tucked under her elbow. She heard her husband called out, "Catherine!"

No, she thought. Let him find me for once, let him keep calling for me.

"Oh, there you are." Brandon casually strolled into the library. "I must speak with Elizabeth."

Catherine released the spaniel. She folded her hands and sat back against the wall. He understands nothing, least of all me, she thought.

"Catherine? Darling?" He poked his head around a row of books. "It is nearly dark in here. And has someone died? Why are you all in black?" Brandon forced a chuckle.

Catherine considered each question individually and decided to answer none.

"Charles," she said slowly. "Seven years ago, I stood in the same place as you, right there, exploring all your books. You came in, told me that we were to marry, and then you left me to my books. I said nothing."

"Catherine, what has this to do with anything?"

"I said nothing as you bedded the niece of every ambassador to step foot in London." Her voice quivered, but she swallowed deeply and continued. "I say nothing. That is a wife's duty. That is a wife's place."

"Catherine, why are you head to toe in black?" Brandon opened his arms for her. She only shook her head.

"With the Northern uprising," she whispered. "I reconciled myself to living with the winter that fell between us."

"Sweetheart! It is done now!" Charles insisted. "Cromwell will be dead within the week, and with him all the trouble he caused, the blood he forced me to spill." Charles moved towards her. "The blood that drove us apart. But we can mend us."

Catherine shook her head again. "I will sleep in an empty bed, but I refuse to sleep in one of lies. You may do with your conscience as you wish. You would let the Gospels remain an ignorant mystery to you, yet persecute those who thirst for more, those who follow curiosity and wonder." She moved to leave, and Brandon sidestepped in her way.

"But once Cromwell is dead and his mischief buried with him-"

"I no longer love you, Charles," she finished. "You are no longer my sweet Charles. The Charles I knew loved hunting and jousting. The Charles I knew would never delight in the destruction of another man's principles." She stood and smoothed her black lace petticoat. "Good-bye, Charles."

Now Brandon stepped forward, one arm on each side of the panel, trapping her.

"You leave me, I will never allow you to see our boy again."

Catherine's knees buckled, but she caught hold of the duke's powerful arms and righted herself.

"He's my son, I raised him," she managed. Brandon's face hardened into a death mask.

"He is _my _son. And his true mother is cold in the ground."

"Of a broken heart, no doubt," Catherine said quietly. His arms fell to his sides and his thick fingers curled up into his palms.

"If you leave me," he repeated, slower this time. "I will take little Henry from you. You will not know him, nor he you. Leave me: leave little Henry."

Catherine's legs quaked like jelly. She pushed herself against the books to keep from faltering. She had known it would come to this. Yet, she could not quite believe it all the same.

"I am not asking for an annulment. I am not asking for a divorce. After all that I have given you, Charles, please grant me this: let us be free of one another.

Brandon thinned his lips. "Madam, the choice is yours. It is either the child or yourself."

The tides of history and tradition pulled at Catherine. She could practically feel the ground slip away under feet, and the waves rushed in to pull her far, far out to sea.

"I choose my own life," she heard herself say. "I choose myself." Catherine nudged herself away from Charles until they stood on opposite sides. She made her way to the door, and the silence choked them both. At the threshold, she turned back and summoned the last of her strength.

"Good-bye, Charles. I wish you peace and a quiet conscience. But if you think to try me, then I will fight. I will fight for our boy, for my lands, for my incomes." She regarded Brandon another moment. "I am sending a man tomorrow morning. I ask that you sign the deeds and mortgage."

"What of Elizabeth," he choked out.

"Gone," Catherine said without turning around. "Gone."

IV.

When Henry summoned Charles Brandon and Edward to the tennis courts, the duke naturally assumed that his king wished to challenge him to a match. As they walked, Brandon loosened the silk ties around his shirt and bandied his racquet as if it were a sword.

"The king's vigor is much improved. He tells me his leg is cured, that sex is a wonderful medicine," Brandon said with the exaggerated lightness of a man trying to ignore dark skies.

"Your Grace," Edward sighed. By now, Cromwell's second letter must have reached Henry. And Edward's little birds chirped that Christina of Milan was taking much more than a passing interest in Cromwell. If Henry summoned his lords to the tennis court, like as not it would be to buffet them over the head with his racquet.

As a squire announced them, a ball cracked against the wall, sailed back over Henry's shoulder, only to narrowly miss a frontal assault on Edward's face.

"What is this!" Henry demanded. "What, by the fucking bones of Becket is this!" He shouted.

"If Your Majesty would advise us as to the difficulty—"Brandon discreetly moved his tennis racquet behind his back.

One of the privy gentlemen scuttled towards Edward and Brandon with two neatly folded letters on a velvet pouch. Henry did not wait for his lords to finish reading.

" 'Most gracious Prince,'" Henry recited. " 'I am but only a woman and only sixteen. It is true as a woman, I am hostage to my heart and am swayed as such, but I fear you have been deceived by false counselors who would have you put to death by light pretense and false pretexts the most loyal, faithful servant-'"

Edward scanned the Duchess of Milan's neat, feminine writing. She wrote in flawless French but spoke in the language Henry liked best.

"She tells me that she cries herself to sleep at night, desiring nothing more to be queen at my side—although she knows that cannot be—because she thought me the most handsome, most gallant prince in Christendom." Henry steadied himself against the velvet tasseled net. His eyes grew large and moist at the thought of a beautiful princess longing for him.

"My lady writes of her respect for the English courts," Henry continued. "And of my wisdom and mercy. But that she believes I have been deceived by the envious and those who wish to return me to Rome." Henry lurched forward and served the ball across the court. "I am my own master! I will not bend the knee to the Bishop of Rome! Am I a bull to be led by the nose?" Henry cracked the ball against the far wall. Then he collapsed against the net.

"Oh, you can hear her voice come across, she is as bereft as I am that the Cleves Mare came between us. I have lost her favor," Henry sighed. He scratched at his chin with the racquet. "Oh Christ…if she believes me ungallant…"

Edward's eyes darted to the last lines. "Majesty," he began. "She offers safe conduct and amnesty in the event that you demonstrate the aforementioned wisdom and mercy by pardoning Master Cromwell."

" 'Should my glorious prince be the knight of my dreams and grant me this small request,' " Edward read. " 'I will think kindly upon you and favor you for the rest of my days.'" He looked up from the letter. Perhaps the Emperor was at play. Perhaps the little duchess had reached some secret understanding with that black badger. Perhaps her formidable aunt thought Thomas Cromwell could make her rich, and he could not do that without his wily head on his shoulders.

"Is there not some, some argument that we have nothing to gain from Master Cromwell's death?" Edward suggested quietly.

"He's attainted, condemned, guilty of treason," Brandon pointed out.

Henry slicked the sweat off his face with the back of his hand. "Condemned, yes. Guilty, yes. Just of what neither you, nor Gardiner, can quite tell me. Just of what heresy, Mr. Cromwell refuses to specify even when threatened with hanging, drawing, quartering. Every day he lives, that overgrown bat grows in strength, conviction. He sent another letter. Another letter where he confesses nothing." Henry's envoys had offered Cromwell a clean, quick death with an axe in exchange for an admission of his heresies. Cromwell, ever a lawyer, gave up nothing, but managed to fill up seven pages worth of platitudes.

"By God, I will cut out Cromwell's heart," Henry muttered. "I said I would make Cardinal Pole eat his heart. I can do the same for the son of a brewer."

"Still…" Edward pressed. Truth be told, a world without Cromwell seemed less and less a place in which Edward wished to live. Cromwell loved money, but he also loved learning, science, and questions. Bishop Gardiner stoked his fires with Englishmen, and if he loved anything, even the word of Christ, the Bishop hid it under his violet robes.

"Lissie Seymour," Henry barked. "How does she?"

"Very well," Brandon said too quickly.

"Oh, so you see her. I would think her in confinement?" Henry edged his bad leg forward.

"My wife tells me."

Henry snorted at that.

"You two never seemed close," Henry mused as he turned to Edward. "Lissie, I mean. She was always about with your brother, with Jane, or Tom Wyatt." He studied his racket, tracing where his tantrum had snapped the twine.

"She might take it better from you," Henry continued. He moved towards Edward, and the faint smell of decay floated to his nostrils. Fortunately, the net prevented Edward from fleeing.

"Take what?" Brandon dared to ask.

"That diamond. The one Cromwell used to buy her maidenhead. I want it," Henry said simply. "I want to give it to my kitten as a wedding present." When silence greeted him, Henry threw the racquet aside. "Must I spell it out for you? I never had to make myself plain to Cromwell! He knew what to do without being told! I want the diamond. Return to court with it, or do not bother returning at all." Henry jerked his head to the side, dismissing the duke and the lord.

Brandon always gambled to the last farthing and beyond, but Edward Seymour knew when to lay his cards flat on the table and admit the awful hand dealt.

"There is some difficulty in that," Edward said to his shoes.

"The diamond is in a state of—" Brandon stalled.

"Go to Lissie. I do not care if you turn her upside down and strip her naked as she came in this world. Find it!"

"My sister is...not reliably located," Edward admitted.

Henry nodded, frowned, ran his tongue over his plump lips. "I see," he said calmly after a while.

"You must forgive the earl, here," Brandon ran on. "Your Majesty loved your sister dearly. Surely, the leniency of a tender brother-"

Edward could hear nothing more. He stared gape mouthed and dumb as Charles Brandon shoved him in front of the runaway cart tumbling straight for them. As Edward tripped in his own web, he considered that perhaps Cromwell would have made for much more reliable company than the duke. If only.

"Cromwell held my sister in his thrall. Some say for black arts, some say for gold," Edward rejoined. He found his footing again. "It should not have surprised me that Lissie took the arrest of her husband so hard and fled the City. She always spent too much time reading stories from France about noble ladies running off with squires."

"Except Master Cromwell was never her husband. And God knows, he was no squire," Henry said coolly. "Did either of you honestly believe that a little bird would not fly to me and whisper that both you bloody fools let her slip through your fingers? Do you think Cromwell ever came to me chirping, 'ever so sorry my king, but I forgot to arrest George Boleyn, and come to think of it, Henry Norris fell off an apple cart and he is nowhere to be seen?'"

"Allow me to bring her to Your Majesty." Edward dodged the king's question.

"So, you know where she is?" Henry purred.

"Lissie is as subtle as a boulder tumbling down a hill. I cannot imagine it will take long to find her," Brandon added.

Henry glanced between the faces of the lord and the duke.

"Smoke her out. Set a little fire beneath her house, and she'll scurry out with all the other rats," Henry thought aloud. "Charles, put it about London that Elizabeth Seymour will present herself, her bastards, and that diamond to me three days from hence. Otherwise, Richard and Gregory Cromwell will join their patriarch on the scaffold."

Henry dragged himself directly in front of Edward. He set to tightening the silk ties around Edward's collar.

"You are too loose, my lord," Henry continued. "You ought to tie a tighter knot about things."

Edward did not dare breathe or swallow.

"Bring your sister to me," Henry said. "Bring me a real confession from Cromwell. And we will see how far you rise, Edward." He clapped Edward's shoulder so hard the flesh stung.

"My sister. A confession. As Your Majesty commands," Edward managed.

Henry took the little Duchess's letter from Edward's fingers. He raised it under his neatly trimmed moustache and breathed deeply of a damsel in distress that only existed in the king's mind.

"I must show Her Grace, Christina of Milan, that England is no Spain, no Rome. That the law rules the land here." Henry shook his head. "That I rule here. Not the Bishop of Rome." He flicked his hand at the door: the audience was over.

As Edward crossed over the threshold, he heard the king mutter: "Cromwell never left his cloth un-hemmed. He would never have botched things. Knaves like you two almost make me long for that black badger."

V.

Elizabeth held her breath. The pains began within the hour after Lucy brought her the awful gossip: kneel before King Henry at Whitehall, or see the heads of Gregory and Richard mounted next to Cromwell.

Mary had told her: "I don't doubt Master Gregory and Master Richard are very fine young men. They may be kin, but they are not blood. Take your boy and the child within you safely across the channel."

"Do you honestly entrust the king with the care of you and your children?" Lucy pressed.

No, Elizabeth did not. And, Edward and Tom, her own flesh and blood, did not seem terribly concerned with tearing her world to pieces, either. Elizabeth now lived in land where blood ran thinner than water, and near-strangers were slightly more reliable.

"There may be nothing for me in Antwerp," Elizabeth answered. "I may lose the baby at sea. The only thing I know for certain is that I am haunted by enough ghosts."

Elizabeth named them silently: Anne and George Boleyn, Henry Norris, Mark Smeaton, Will Brereton, the shell that used to be Thomas Wyatt, poor Robert Aske. And Jane. Always Jane.

"Nothing else is for certain," Elizabeth concluded. She slid a silver piece across the table to Lucy. "Not even what you'll fetch at the market for our dinner." Her hosts nodded and left Elizabeth to choose between the cooking kettle and the kitchen fire.

In the years to come, Elizabeth would always wonder if the shock of the news that Gregory and Richard might yet lay their necks bare for the axe was what shook the baby inside her awake, made the child reach for the world outside. Or, perhaps like so many events in her life, the world simply unfurled as it would.

The ache rolled across her lower back and clenched in her womb. Elizabeth forced herself to exhale the breath she sucked in with each pain. The cramps came far enough apart that Elizabeth dared hope she was in a false labor.

"Lotte," she called out. "Bring Harr to me. And run the comb through my hair while we wait for your mother to return from the market." Elizabeth sat on a low stool before a table and thin slat mirror. Good God, she realized. I am twenty-six. I am not young anymore. She recalled looking at herself in her mother's gilt mirror with Jane when they tottered between childhood and womanhood. Elizabeth had had forced Jane to concede that her younger sister was the prettier of the two. When their mother overheard, she stormed towards Elizabeth and slapped her cheek so hard, Elizabeth's ears still rang when she conjured the memory.

"Don't ever let me hear you think such foolishness again," proclaimed Margery Wentworth, the loveliest woman in England. "Beauty is a fool's spring. Have some wits in your head and tenderness in your heart. Because when your autumn and winter come, that will be all you have left."

Charlotte beamed up from the little wooden horse she and Harr had contentedly rolled between them.

"I can try a new braid?" she offered.

Elizabeth nodded and fumbled for a penny to give the child. When Harr came to stand beside her, he impatiently lifted his stocky arms. Another cramp hit Elizabeth between her legs, coaxing a single tear of sweat between her brows.

"Later," she told Harr. He sighed and sat on the hem of Elizabeth's shift. Charlotte ran the comb through Elizabeth's copper hair in smooth, sure strokes. She tried to lose herself to the pleasure of being groomed. Another pang pushed out a low groan from Elizabeth.

"Lotte, how long will your mother be away? What of your grandmother?" Elizabeth's voice shot up an octave in the effort to keep her tone calm.

"Depends on how hard she decides to bargain with the butcher. And Grandmama likes to chase down old tenants who have not paid in full." Lotte twisted up one-half of Elizabeth's hair in a braid that snaked under the nape. "My lady, are you well? You're head is as drenched as if you poured a bucket over yourself."

Salty perspiration dripped off the tip of Elizabeth's nose. No, she mouthed. No, not yet, little one. A warm puddle let loose between her legs.

"Lotte," she managed. "Please stoke the fire and fill your largest kettle."

"But, it's so hot," she protested, starting in on the next braid. "You are so warm."

"Please, Lotte!" Elizabeth snapped. "Do as you're told!" Harr's head shot up in alarm at his mother's tone. Elizabeth clenched his dark curls. "Oh, my lamb, if I had a pence for every time someone told that, I would be rich as the Sultan." She forced a smile as the cramp ebbed. She wondered where the tide washed Ismail and Isabel ashore, she hoped they became lovers, and she desperately wished they were with her now.

"Harr, when Lotte returns, go play with her in the courtyard," Elizabeth said. "I need to rest."

After Lotte poked the embers alive and filled the kettle, she scampered back to Elizabeth's side. She squeaked at the large wet spot between Elizabeth's thighs.

"Is it the baby?" Lotte whispered. "I know a little bit about these things." She blushed furiously. "Isn't there something I should do?"

Elizabeth sank her nails into the table. "We'll need clean linen, as much as the house can spare. But there's something I need you to do now."

Lotte nodded vigorously, desperate to be of service.

"Sweetheart, fetch your mother's sewing scissors. There is one thing I want you to do. Pull my hair back into a single plait."

"Mother will be mad I touched her scissors," Lotte called over her shoulder as she dashed off. "I'll say it was your idea." As Lotte rummaged through a sewing basket, Harr twisted his face up to meet Elizabeth's gaze.

"I'm tired," he whispered. "I'm afraid."

Elizabeth's hand caught under Harr's fleshy chin, so he could not turn from her.

"Harr, there is nothing more for us to fear. You and me, we will be all right. I promise you." For once, Elizabeth actually believed herself, believed in herself and that by fang and claw, she could clear a path to safety for Harr and the baby.

Lotte trotted back with the scissors. Elizabeth might have scolded the girl for running with scissors if time had not been of the essence.

"A single plait, not a hair out of place," she told Lotte. With her hair pulled back, some of the heat and sweat lifted. "Lotte, take those scissors—steady now. I need you to cut the braid off. Get a good chunk of the braid between the scissors and work your way through."

Lotte sniffled and whimpered, but she did as she was told without asking why. When she finished, she laid the braid across Elizabeth's lap.

"I should tidy up the sides," Lotte said more to herself than anyone else. When she finished, Elizabeth snaked her fingers through her hair, stunned when her hair abruptly stopped after her neckline. She almost laughed at the weightlessness of it but stopped short when another labor pain pulled through her entrails.

"Well done, sweetheart. Wrap the braid in some silk and take Harr outside."

Once Mary and Lucy returned from the market, saw the giant kettle boiling and the linen piled ceiling high, the two women quickly pieced together the situation. They burst into the little garret room to find Elizabeth in her shift, panting on her hands and knees.

"I have terrible timing, I know," Elizabeth said. "But, it used to be a matter of always being late."

Mary hiked Elizabeth's shift over her hips without an invitation, while Lucy took the liberty of pushing apart Elizabeth's thighs for a better look.

"You're far along. It should be an easy birth," Lucy said. All three women shared a bitter laugh: an easy birth? Elizabeth thought, all us beings come screaming into this world in a mess of blood and shit, and most of us will probably leave the same way. Do not tell me that nobles sit higher than their maidservants in the eyes of our Lord. Do not tell me that King Henry has been touched by God to rule England when he slithered between Queen Elizabeth's thighs and into the light, carried on a flood of afterbirth.

"Mary Mother of God. Hail Mary full of grace!" Elizabeth shouted. Her Catholicism came back to her out of instinct, riding on clouds of imagined incense and the Latin prayers that rolled off the tongue. The Latin prayers that Jane never understood but loved all the same.

"Love of Christ, I can't," Elizabeth said. She had forgotten how inhuman the labor pains were. How a woman needed to make herself half-divine in order to live to hold her child. Or, a woman needed to strip herself down 'til only a beast and her will remained.

"Lucy, you grab her elbows," Mary ordered. The women hauled Elizabeth from squatting on all fours until she hung on their shoulders. A deep, animal need awakened in Elizabeth, a need that told her to push.

"That's my girl, that's my girl," Mary cooed as Elizabeth sucked in another breath and pushed until she feared her guts would rip. She hung off Mary while Lucy ducked beneath Elizabeth and cleaned her thighs with linen soaked in boiling water.

"I can just make out the head!" Lucy announced. "You need to push again and stop at that." She swung Elizabeth's arm around her neck. "So close. Too late to turn back. Breathe deep and push like the Devil is in you."

Elizabeth swallowed back a scream and what came out was a growl. The muscle memory twitched awake and her muscles, entrails, and anything left she had to give, they all told her body to bear down and push.

"There's the head," Mary said quietly. "Lucy, clean her legs and parts again."

Lucy had just enough time to clean before she caught Elizabeth's second child. Lucy sucked away the mucus, smacked a rump, and the air flooded out of the room as a shrill, indignant cry filled each nook and cranny.

Mary eased Elizabeth back onto the pallet, but Elizabeth peered over the older woman's shoulder.

"Pray God, how does the child?" she panted.

"A healthy boy. And does this one have lungs to hear him."

Another boy. Cromwell had always said the last thing England needed was another Thomas, or another Elizabeth for that matter. We'd be calling for our children, but half of London would have to roll out of bed at the sound, Cromwell had explained one late night.

Lucy wiped the blood from the squirming bundle she pressed to Elizabeth's breast. A miniature, slimy fist reached from the linen and jabbed at the air, ready to pick a fight with a world he had not even met. As Elizabeth watched the infant rage, and she ran her fingers through his wet black curls, a single name stuck in her throat.

"Thomas," she said. "His name his Thomas."

VI.

Henry's deputation to Cromwell was more a troupe of players than anything else: the lords, the priest, and the turn-cloak. These days, Richard Rich crossed himself, knelt before the Host, proclaimed that wine turned to blood, and otherwise competed in Catholicism with the Pope.

"And, how is our prisoner today, Master Kingston?" Edward asked.

"Quiet, he's gone into himself," the Constable answered. "Calm, courteous to his jailers. Although, it set Mr. Cromwell's teeth on edge that he is only able to have his barber once per week." Kingston chuckled at that.

"A man ought to have a decent shave before he dies," Henry, Lord Surrey observed without a trace of irony or malice. Edward and Brandon could barely share the same dining hall, so Edward had asked Surrey to come along instead. Surrey hated Cromwell, but the Howard heir let it be known he hated Edward more.

Kingston jangled the keys until iron screeched against iron and the door swung open. Cromwell sat straight and proud at the crude desk, scribbling away as if he were still the highest man in England after the king. Cromwell wore his breeches but had draped his linen undershirt over the chair. He wrote furiously with one hand, and used his free hand to signal his guests into silence.

"Another moment if you please, gentlemen," Cromwell said, distracted. Always distracted with some business. Far from the weeping, hunched creature that Edward expected, Cromwell sat straight and true. Always a thin man to behold, what little weight Cromwell had to give was gone now, nothing but sinew, black hair, and his mind. His ceaseless mind that now frightened the king.

When the quill ran out of ink, Cromwell set the fine tip aside.

"Good of you to come, Sir Richard," Cromwell said without turning around. "You must be tired, all the contortions you've been making." He glanced over his left shoulder. "But you always were something of an acrobat, when it came to politics, I mean, Sir Richard," he clarified. Even caged, underfed, and utterly defeated, Cromwell maintained an air of invincibility founded in a probably accurate conviction that he was always the cleverest man in the room.

"Would you like to put your shirt on, Mister Cromwell," Surrey offered. Henry Howard's deep, scratchy voice filled the entire cell. "His Grace, Archbishop of Canterbury has come to hear your confession. You might show the respect that such an office deserves."

Cromwell swiveled around, and Edward stared at a point just past the prisoner's head. With his cheeks sunk in, Cromwell's face was all eyes now. But, they were clear blue, no longer that unsettling shade of midnight. He was still a striking man in his own peculiar way, and Edward imagined that a man like that could keep Lissie in thrall, hold her at arm's length, then keep her coming back for more.  
Cromwell regarded the chessboard before him, then moved his bishop into play. "Your Grace, most godly man in England, tell me how you find the state of matrimony in the kingdom, as it compares somewhere else—the German free cities, for instance?"

Cranmer's scared, rabbit eyes grew wide and flickered around the cell. "My poor wretched friend. We are here for your confession. I am afraid this will be a one-sided conversation."

"Well, show me a happily married woman, and I will show you a liar," Surrey answered the question for everyone. But he studied Cranmer's discomfort for a moment.

Cromwell allowed the pause to play out into a choking silence. Finally he said: "I see no need to perjure myself as some may think I should." Cromwell pressed his fingers into a steeple beneath his chin, taking in Edward and Surrey. "Just because I am going to die," Cromwell added.

"Dear Thomas, no one is asking you to lie," Cranmer pressed gently. Rich helped himself to Cromwell's ink and paper; the quill dangled above the parchment, ready to transcribe the real undoing of Thomas Cromwell.

"Is not the very definition of a lie something that is not true?" Cromwell examined. He turned to Surrey. "But I suppose that is a question better debated by poets, not by lawyers."

"The truth is that you are condemned to die," Surrey said bluntly. "What remains is the means."

"And I thank God for granting me death for whatever is my offense." Cromwell wiped his hands across his eyes. "Rowing against the tide, it's worn me to the ground in body and heart." At that, Cromwell sank against the desk. A weariness had overtaken the former Lord Privy Seal. And Edward worried what information could reliably be gotten from a man who truly did not mind dying.

Cranmer traversed the cell in two wide steps. The Archbishop of Canterbury knelt at the feet of the son of an innkeeper and brewer. He squeezed Cromwell's arm.

"Dear Thomas, let me, let God take on some of that weight. It is only the truth that can set your soul free."

"And is the truth something borne out by evidence, or is it that which pleases the King?" Cromwell asked.

"You of all people should know the answer to that," Edward murmured. He hung back, taking comfort in the cool brick and mortar of the Tower. We are now all one foot wrong from this place, he thought.

"My confession, my confession is this." Cromwell squared his shoulders, closed his eyes and breathed deep. "I was a poor man, raised very high by the King."

Another pause stretched into another silence.

"All that we have, we owe to the King," Cranmer said.

"But, that is _the_ crime, is it not? I confess I am a poor man, raised—perhaps by an unnatural degree—to great heights by the king. And I was not contented by that, not with having the kingdom at my orders. So, I pursued a higher state." Cromwell shook a little. He nudged off Cranmer's well-meaning hand. "I confess my pride has brought on this punishment." Cromwell swallowed hard. "And not only upon me, but upon those I loved most. And if that is not a crime by law, it is a great offense worthy of the punishment I will meet."

Not another silence, Edward thought. Rich had stopped writing, and Surrey edged towards Cromwell, as if seeing that black badger for the first time but seeing no badger at all.  
"It will come as no shock to you, Gentlemen, that since I came of age I have lived as a sinner," Cromwell carried steadily on. "But, are we not all fraught with sin?" he turned to Cranmer. "If we were not so frail, weak, _human_, wouldn't Your Grace be turned out of a job?  
"I am confessing to usury, bribery, for which I ask my God forgiveness." Cromwell flexed his hands, reflected on the ink-stained knuckles before he spoke up. "And, I confess I love my family, my children more than I could ever love any saint or any prince." Cromwell's fingers strained and folded until they disappeared into formidable looking fists. "It is for my family, for my children, for my wife I will confess to the following."

"Elizabeth was never your wife, remember?" Cranmer recalled, not unkindly.

"I offended my Prince," Cromwell said. "I ask his Majesty's hearty forgiveness for…" Cromwell's voice trailed off. The most silver-tongued lawyer in the land could not even come up with a law that had actually been broken. "Well, tell the king I pray for him nightly," Cromwell directed at Rich, who had taken up the quill again.

"Your heresies?" Surrey inquired. He sounded genuinely interested, shelving his contempt for a low man in favor of fascination for a man utterly beyond convention.

"I die as a true Catholic of the New Testament," Cromwell said simply. "I die in the true religion."

"And what is the true religion, Thomas?" the Archbishop pushed. Cromwell threw Cranmer a look so sharp that the younger man had the sense to stare at his embroidered shoes.

"Please, Your Grace, do tell me. I imagined that is what the king pays you for, after all," Cromwell barked.

Cranmer opened his mouth to ask another question, but Surrey wisely raised a hand to stop him, slowly shaking his head. Edward knew now why the king never wanted Cromwell to appear in open court; this lawyer/banker/ soldier of fortune would have made the peerage of England play the fool.

"There is the matter of the diamond," Edward began and then he wished he hadn't. Cromwell arched an eyebrow and settled an easy arm against the desk. The fighting dog in him had caught a whiff of blood and was pacing for a fight.

"So many diamonds at court…a good deal going to Lord Surrey's niece, Mistress Katherine," Cromwell remarked.

"The diamond you gave my sister," Edward explained weakly. Cromwell played the silence again and let the note stretch. And stretch.

Surrey threw up his hands. "The gem is not in the inventory of your houses and goods. The king wants it as wedding gift for my niece. His Majesty is quite beyond your games and your toils. Good God man, make it an easy death for yourself and say where it is."

"In the first place, I should ask Lissie." Cromwell crossed his arms across his jutting ribs. "And I suppose you would have asked her if you could."

Again, that interminable silence. For a man who had tortured Edward by always managing the last word, Cromwell seemed quite comfortable in the vacuum of wordlessness.

"You've got her bricked in one of your safe-houses, no doubt, with your evangelical preachers and sacramentaries," Surrey grumbled.

"Jesus Christ on the cross!" Cromwell snapped. "If I had such sanctuaries, it does not take a great deal of imagination to think I would be there instead of here."

"Thomas, step lightly," Cranmer gently corrected. "The King has it about London that Lissie Seymour must present herself, your children, along with the diamond in less than three days."

"Or?" Cromwell demanded. He knew Henry better than Henry knew himself. The king always trapped himself in a corner with his wild ultimatums.

"Or, your son, Gregory, and your nephew, Richard, will find their heads mounted on a pike next to yours," Surrey finished.

Cromwell cracked his knuckles and released a hitched breath. "I cannot say where she is. Really, I cannot. And if I knew, of all the wrongs I have done Lissie, I will not be her Judas. If she is gone, she's gone."

"You have your older boys to consider, or are they of no consideration?"

Cromwell's eyes fluttered for a moment and his face drained to gray. He looked ready to faint but straightened himself again.

"I promised their mothers that I would protect them with my life," he said simply. "All I have left to offer the King is my life and my conscience. And he can have both." Cromwell turned to sprinkle the paper he'd been writing with sand. Rich outstretched a hand to take the letter, but Cromwell ignored him. He held the paper out -just far enough to make Surrey edge forward to grad hold of the letter.

"Tell the King I beg for mercy," he said quietly.

"I will do my best to keep your boys out of harm's way," Surrey admitted grudgingly. How many Howards had thrown themselves at the throne, only to land on the scaffold? Henry Howard understood that it was bad business for all the great families if King Henry made it policy that to be kin to a condemned traitor was treason itself.

"Well, you fine gentlemen have mostly what you want. I'd like to be left alone now with my prayers." Cromwell turned his back and folded his hands under his jaw. Cranmer stood and reached again, as though he might shake Cromwell's hand. Surrey sighed and waved the men towards the cell door. Sheepish footsteps padded out the door, and only Edward lingered.

"Is there something else, Edward?" Cromwell asked without opening his eyes or turning around.

Edward wanted to dash out to freedom, away from a shame that he desperately did not want to admit.

He pulled out the Book of Hours from his vest. He placed the thin chain linking two rings on Cromwell's desk. Cromwell's fingers moved to the exact place in the book where the locks of hair were ensconced between richly illustrated vellum.

"My thanks," he said with quiet dignity. He pulled the chain over his head. "Everyone, everything, that I ever loved, I have lost. And it may be that when I die, it will be simply be going home." Cromwell finally turned to Edward and looked him squarely in the eye. "But it's wasted breath on you. You love nothing and no one, and no one loves you." He nodded towards the door, dismissing Edward.

"But one more thing, Edward," Cromwell said. "Has Mistress Katherine spoken of a Henry Mannox or a Francis Dereham?"

Edward's tracks stopped directly on the threshold. He had a sick, nagging feeling that Cromwell had set another trap door straight ahead. That he knew something so obvious, that the conspirators in their arrogance had stared straight past.

"No, those names mean nothing to me. Why should they?"

"Because those names mean something to England's next queen." Cromwell turned back to his desk. "Don't bother yourself with it, Edward. It will be clear as glass soon enough."

Just before the iron grate slammed shut behind Edward, he edged his boot to keep the door open.

"The manner of your death, while not official, His Majesty has a mind to cut out your heart and make you eat it." Edward meant to sound triumphant, but when Cromwell did not so much as flinch, Edward felt shrill and useless.

Edward's color must have drained because in the bright, summer sun, Surrey remarked:

"You won't rise much farther if you can't be in the Tower without looking seasick from it. People will question if you are man enough to serve the King."

"It must be reported that you got on rather well with the traitor," Edward retorted.

Surrey laughed at that. "Oh, Cromwell is as base a metal as they come. Not even Jesus Christ himself can make the transmutation necessary to turn that brewer's son into a gentleman, much less an earl. But, the poet in me cannot help but take to a man who lived his life exactly as he pleased."

"Cromwell was a violation to the natural order of things," Edward defended.

"Oh, I do hope not," Surrey chortled. "For I love to see my nieces wear the crown."

VII.

"I know how to hail a boat," Elizabeth said tersely. She gently pushed Harr towards Lucy's skirts. When he had seen Elizabeth being laced into a gown, he quickly put together that his mother was going somewhere without him. Harr spent the morning fussing and clinging to Elizabeth's knees.

"At least one of us to lean on," Mary offered. "Quite literally. You look like death, like you won't make it ten paces. Let one of us help you on and off the boat."

Elizabeth shook her head. "Just promise that you will place my babies into the care of Master Ralph Sadler."

"A cloak? A hood?" Lucy begged as she handed Elizabeth a paper-wrapped parcel. Only after little Tom was cleaned and swaddled did Mary and Lucy realize that Elizabeth's hair had been hacked chin level. And Elizabeth loved them for being utterly scandalized by it.

"This is me. Let the king take me or leave me." Elizabeth stepped into the glaring mid-morning light. It was an effort to get from the door to the edge of the courtyard. But Elizabeth thought she moved rather deft for a woman who had given birth less than a day ago. She was sore and her torn muscles protested every step, but her mission breathed determination into her lungs.

"Have enough coin for the boat?" Mary called out.

"Yes, and I promise not to speak to strangers," Elizabeth answered over her shoulder.

Once out of the inn's grounds, Elizabeth fell in step with the slow moving traffic. She wore a plain dark blue linen gown in a simple pattern. The only thing to set her apart from other London matrons was her uncovered, short hair. A few citizens gasped in pity, thinking she must be ruined and selling her hair to the wigmaker for a pound or two. But it seemed everyone had some place to be, some business to transact, so no one tarried and stared for too long.

The crowd pushed against her at the quayside, and Elizabeth surprised herself when she pushed back to jostle for her place in the world. She hailed a boat, and when she told him "Whitehall," he heaved out a shrug.

"You out to petition a favor?"

"I think so," Elizabeth replied.

"Much good may it do you." He managed short breaths while he rowed. "With Master Cromwell out of favor, no nobleman bothers himself with the likes of you and me." He spat across the side of the boat. "Sit themselves under cloth of gold, they do. Never a thought about what keeps their arses on velvet cushions."

"I'd like to know what keeps an arse on a velvet cushion," Elizabeth challenged. She meant to banter, but the boatman looked at her through red-rimmed deadly serious eyes.

"It's you and me, you and me scraping around for a coin to survive. I sell my arms every day. It looks like you had to sell your hair."

They made their way up the brown Thames in silence. When she paid him, he checked the coin with his black teeth. At the quality of the metal, he regarded Elizabeth carefully.

"Once was a time when you were a somebody, wasn't that the way of it?" he asked.

"Once," Elizabeth shook her head. "And now I sell what I can to keep noble arses on velvet cushions."

He laughed as he pushed off. "Your hair will grow back. Your pretty face will catch a man with money, and you'll be sitting on cushions soon enough."

Elizabeth lucked out that a Seymour servant spotted her first, her bare copper head bobbing in and out of a sea of flatterers, courtiers, and hangers-on. Soon enough, Edward thundered through the crowd with his retinue.

"Edward," she said simply. "If you would take me to—"

"Decency's sake! Cover your head!" he shouted. If a crowd, no, an audience was not already assembled, Edward's hollering had gathered a small army.

Elizabeth felt the weight of dozens of eyes; she cared not in the least. Elizabeth wore the last four years of her life like a shield: Cromwell, fear, love, lust, and grief after grief. I fear nothing, no one, Elizabeth told herself. She squared her shoulders and stepped towards Edward.

"Has the Lord Hertford become the town crier?" Elizabeth asked. "Shall we make this business quiet and quick?" Under her breath, she asked, "Or, I can make this as loud and embarrassing for the Seymours as you want."

Edward measured her determination and conceded: "I will take you to the king." He offered his arm, and Elizabeth rested her hand on him and allowed her brother to play at being a brother.

"You aren't big as a house, so I suppose you had the child," he grumbled.

"A son. His name is Thomas."

"I would not mention either of those details to His Majesty." Edward softened. "I am glad you are well. I wish when Cromwell fell-"

"I wouldn't say 'fell,' Edward," she corrected. "More like 'pushed.'"

"I wish things would have…turned out…"

Elizabeth halted their procession. "I look at you, and I feel nothing, Edward. Nothing. I note no trespasses, I do not tally my debts. Please do not say you are sorry."

"You were supposed to present your children," Edward continued. His liverymen trotted before them. Elizabeth was two doors away from the King of England.

"Your children?" Edward asked again.

"They are safe."

"The king meant for you to—"

"I never gamble with more than I am prepared to lose," Elizabeth interrupted him. Her eyes traveled over lines in her brother's face that she did not recall being etched in so deeply. "You might consider doing the same."

They cleared a set of doors. Only another panel of English oak separated Elizabeth from the king's clemency, or her own death warrant. Elizabeth almost asked for another moment to compose herself then laughed at the absurdity. She would need months, years to regain her red-gold mane.

Edward shoved a scrap of paper at her.

"His last correspondence, before the king had his inks and papers taken away."

No need to ask who "He," was. He. The man who made Elizabeth forget her past, carved out her present, and would haunt her future. Elizabeth discreetly unfolded the note.

_Lissie,_

_Please forgive me. Think well on me. Tell our children what you think is the truth._

_Thomas_

She nudged the paper into the parcel shoved under her arms. Thomas, she wanted tell him, Thomas, you are the first and only man I will love.

"My sister, Lady Elizabeth Seymour," Edward announced. Elizabeth dropped into a curtsey. She had a part to play here.

Henry didn't bother looking up until he finished signing the document before him. He took his time with the sealing wax, so much time that Elizabeth sank to her knees in exhaustion.

Fortunately, Henry took it for deference.

"Oh, it's you." He said finally. "Well, what have you to say for yourself?"

"Majesty, I-" she glanced about for a page. They all seemed very interested in the floor tiles. She waved over Edward. Elizabeth shook the diamond out of the parcel. Edward walked the gem over to Henry, holding it between his index and thumb fingers, as if it were filthy and soiled with lust, greed, and ambition.

"I hand this jewel to Your Majesty's treasurer. And with it my blessings to Your Majesty and Mistress Howard." Elizabeth cast her eyes down, sweeping her lashes over her cheeks. Then, she licked her lips and glanced up. Henry was too engrossed in the diamond to scrutinize her penitence for sincerity.

"Your children?" he asked distractedly. Over and over he turned the diamond in the noontime light that filtered through stained glass.

"I feared they would take infection on the river." Elizabeth lied.

"So, you have another bastard to add to the roster?" Henry tore his eyes from the gem. He rolled his cane between his thick fingers, so Elizabeth could see the emerald from Cromwell's ring in its new setting.

"Yes."

"A son or daughter?"

Elizabeth winced. She knew Henry would hate this part the most. "A son."

"Named for his father, I don't doubt." The diamond quickly bored him, and he turned his attention full on Elizabeth.

"Little Lissie, some may say you fled your guardians for guilt. What say you?"

The door shut quietly behind her, and Elizabeth realized that Edward and the other pages had fled the battlefield.

"I am innocent," she said quietly. Elizabeth swallowed hard. "But I am a coward, a coward not to trust in Your Majesty's generosity and mercy." She had rehearsed her speech dozens of times but the bitter words stuck in her throat.

"I plead leniency for myself, for my children, for Mr. Cromwell's family."

Henry sucked at something between his teeth. "What do you offer me in return?"

Elizabeth unwrapped the parcel containing a single plait of her once glorious hair. Elizabeth shimmied forward on her knees towards the throne. Between Henry's bad leg and Elizabeth's childbirth scarred body, she was not sure that either of them could make to their feet. At the steps before Henry's great chair, she kept her eyes wide and full of what she hoped passed for awe.

"I offer Your Majesty the last of my youth, my vanity." She held the braid up. "I have nothing left. No looks. No fortune. Surely, I am of little consequence. Surely, my debts are paid."

Henry said nothing. He took the plait of hair and stroked his fingers through it.

"So," Elizabeth marched on. "I ask your permission to join Mr. Cromwell's niece in Antwerp, with my children."

"Are you aware of the crime under which Mr. Cromwell is charged?" Henry demanded suddenly. "What law he has broken?"  
"No," Elizabeth said quietly. "I know he has offended Your Majesty greatly, and no doubt with cause."

"Well, you would know how he is, better than anyone," Henry smirked.

"It was not, it was not…a proper English marriage," Elizabeth managed.

"No marriage at all, I should think," Henry said flatly. He sniffed and studied the stained glass windows. "But you loved him?"

"I love him still."

Henry opened his mouth, about to ask why. Instead, he turned thoughtful, almost tender. "Love flows where it will." He shook away whatever ghost had turned him inward.

"You are still aunt to the next King of England, and you are woman of grave consequence." Henry said sternly. "Your place is at the English court. But," he reflected. "I see before me a woman much changed, not the wild filly come down from Yorkshire. I see a woman ready to resign herself to a woman's life." Henry nodded, as if he found that thought comforting. "God knows you aren't trying to catch a husband with your hair the way it is."

"Let me go quietly, and I will live quietly," Elizabeth pressed. "I will be a private person of no account."

Henry sighed. "You make a good show. If today were a masque, for certain you would be Remorse. And I am inclined to play Magnanimous. I think of your sister every day, and it is for that reason, only that reason, I grant your request."

"Jane was a gentle flame, in all our lives." Real tears weighed on Elizabeth's eyes.

Henry shifted in the quietness that descended between them. "Your northern lands are restored to you, in your own person as a widow," he declared.

Elizabeth's head shot up at the sudden generosity. She could not let this moment slip through her hands, when the wind of Henry's favor changed and enmity turned to mercy.

"And Master Gregory? Master Richard?"

"They may stay on as private persons of no account. I won't be ungenerous with them."

Elizabeth made her last desperate gamble.

"Majesty, please, I beg you show the same mercy to Thomas Cromwell," she murmured.

Henry's face turned to thunder at the mention of his minister's name. "He is condemned. And do you know for what crime?"

"I cannot say under what law, exactly," Elizabeth said carefully.

"Gardiner can't. Neither can your brother." Henry leaned down until only a few feet separated their faces. "But, Cromwell's ideas, thoughts, they are unnatural. What say you to that, little Lissie?"

"I understand there is a natural order to this world. I would not presume to fight it," Elizabeth parroted for the king.

Henry nodded at that. "You are welcome back to court if you wish. If you wish to go abroad, then you have my leave to sail tomorrow." He extended his jewel-encrusted hand for Elizabeth to kiss. She recognized the gem from her own wedding ring in a new setting. She placed her lips on the cool, green stone.

Henry caught her chin as she looked up.

"There are times I wonder if I ought not to have traded out one sister for the other." He shook his head. "Leave me. I look at you too long, and I see Jane."

From God knows where, Elizabeth summoned the strength to work her feet under her and rise to standing. She backed away from the King of England, not out of deference, but because Henry Tudor was the sort of beast she did not to turn her back on. Since the pages had fled, Elizabeth pushed open the door herself and within one step was nose to nose with half a dozen eavesdroppers. Katherine Howard stood at the forefront. Shock and embarrassment must have immobilized the girl, because when she remained stuck to her place, blocking Elizabeth's path.

Elizabeth raised her palm, and the crowd eagerly waited for what could only be a slap to the Howard girl's cheek. A gasp of disappointed surprise escaped the gathering when Elizabeth merely laid her hand flat against Katherine's bony shoulder.

"Excuse me," Elizabeth said quietly. "I just need to get by." She pushed Katherine to the side just enough so Elizabeth and her skirts could squeeze by.

Even when Elizabeth was almost half-way down the hall, she could hear Katherine shrilly demand:

"Did you see that?! Did you see that? She cannot do that! She cannot do that!"

"Well, she just did," Henry Howard calmly observed.

VIII.

Ralph Sadler met Elizabeth in front of Cromwell's apartments with Harr and Little Tom. Harr squirmed out of Ralph's arms and ran so fast to Elizabeth that had her skirts not trapped him like a net, Elizabeth could not imagine a force that could stop him.

"I imagine when you entered Cromwell's service, you imagined it was for a higher calling than nursemaid," Elizabeth told Ralph as he handed the infant over.

"It has been an honor and a privilege to serve a man like Thomas Cromwell," Ralph said with quiet dignity. "And it has been my pleasure to serve a lady like you."

"The king will not spare him," Elizabeth choked back a sob. She nestled Tom's head into the softness of her neck and squeezed Harr's fleshy palm.

"The king is sending me to the Tower this evening to bring some final papers for him to sign. If there is a letter, some message, you would like me to bring Master Cromwell…". Ralph's voice trailed off.

Elizabeth almost said, tell him that I love him. But even that sounded too shallow, too trite to fully sum up what she felt for Cromwell. All the nights spent fighting, loving, plotting. He had been her enemy, husband, lover, and most surprisingly, he had been a friend too. They had cut at each other, and the blades of their betrayals may have been put away over the past few years, but Elizabeth could not imagine that either of them every truly forgave the other for Robert Aske. How could Elizabeth send Ralph with a tidy message that summed up all of this? That even through the darkest hours, he remained the most interesting person that Elizabeth had met.

"Tell him," Elizabeth began slowly. "Tell him that I will think of him always. Tell him how glad, how humbled it makes me that I was able to call him my husband, even if it was only for a short time."

Ralph nodded and turned squarely on his heel. Elizabeth imagined Ralph left in such a hurry so he would not see her begin to cry. So she would not see him cry.

Elizabeth took her dinner privately with Edward and Anne, who complained bitterly of the noise that Harr and the baby caused. But, Elizabeth marked the way Anne's eyes tracked Harr, brown eyes worn with longing. And when Tom squeezed Anne's little finger with his whole palm, she quickly excused herself.

"Well it's nasty, positively disgraceful, that you let him suck at your teat like a peasant," Anne remarked. Anne, who could never leave on a sweet note.

When Harr could no longer keep his eyes open, and Tom suckled himself into milk-drunk sleep, only then did Elizabeth ask one of the maids to sit with them in what used to be the nursery. Elizabeth wanted to walk the expanse of Whitehall one last time, retrace the secret passageways that led to intrigue and danger. At the late hour, only a few courtiers remained, either passed out drunk or playing at chess or cards.

It surprised Elizabeth that Henry Howard, soon to come into his great estate with another Howard queen, sat by himself, his head resting tiredly against his hands while he dangled a quill.. Instinctively—he loved women, could not help himself-he glanced up at the click of her heels.

"Blind man cut your hair?" he asked.

"It's the latest French fashion," she smirked. The Earl of Surrey was pompous, too attached to the Howard name, but Elizabeth imagined that if she were not a Seymour and he were a little less arrogant, they would have counted each other friends.

"I understand you sail on the morning tide," he said. "Can't blame you, for wanting to put as much distance between yourself and London when the axe rains down tomorrow."

Elizabeth immediately changed the subject. "What is that, my lord?" She sat next to him without an invitation.

"Oh, it's nothing," he dismissed. "A trifle."

"I daresay that our lord Surrey's trifles will one day be regarded as our greatest poetry," Elizabeth smiled. Surrey stared ahead, reflecting for a moment.

"Then, I daresay, my lady can read it." He slid the page to her. "It's a translation, in sonnet form, one of Martial's epigrams." He read Elizabeth's face for comprehension. "That is of course, the Roman poet. But, that doesn't matter. It's about…the happy life." He paused and met Elizabeth's eyes. She wondered at the sadness in his face, and she could not chalk it all up to too much wine.

"The golden mean," Surrey finished. He held her gaze until Elizabeth began to read.

" 'The happy life be these I find. The riches left and not got with pain. The fruitful ground. The quiet mind. The equal friend: no grudge, no strife. No charge of rule, no governance. Without disease the healthful life. Wisdom joined with simplicity. The night discharged of all care." Elizabeth stopped at that. " 'The night discharged of all care,'" she repeated. " 'the quiet mind, wisdom joined with simplicity.'" "A night discharged of all care," she whispered again. "My God, I wish these things were true," Elizabeth admitted.

Surrey turned to her, almost tenderly, he asked, "And which of these, does my Lady Seymour not have?"

"All of them," she said simply. He regarded her for a moment, without blinking.

"Then you are like me," said the Howard to the Seymour. "And like all the Romans, and all the barbarians, and all the generations before us, and all those yet to come. For who does not wish, my lady, with all their heart for 'the quiet mind.' Tell me a single soul who has ever found it?"

A moment hung between them, and neither wished to cheapen it saying another word. Elizabeth knew that Surrey did not pity her. Instead, his gentleness that night sprouted out of an understanding that the same wheels of fortune that had thrown down one of his nieces has tossed up the Seymours, and now that the Seymours were on their way down another Howard was on the way up.

He kissed her hand.

"My lady, I wish you and your children a long, happy life on a distant shore. Let us wish each other a quiet mind." Surrey returned to his translation and left Elizabeth to ponder and pray.

When she climbed into bed with Harr and Little Tom, it was half way to morning. She listened to their breath, soft and steady as a tide. She could not be sure if it was exhaustion or resignation, but when she curled her body around her children, there it was: the quiet mind.

IX.

Thomas Cromwell knelt at his bedside praying. Sometimes the Gospels came out in Latin, other times in French, Italian, German. Languages from other lifetimes. When his courage faltered, he clutched at the rings he wore around his neck.

"Bess, girls," he whispered. "I'm coming home to you." Really, he only regretted that he would die without ever holding his new son. Cromwell had not been modest when he told Cranmer that he had lived as a sinner. The only sin Cromwell had not indulged was gluttony; the other six sins were well and fully accounted for. But, Cromwell could not, would not, believe that he had been a bad man. He had only been as hard as the life into which he was born. All in all, it had been a good life, far better than he had the right to expect. And not for the riches. Simply put: Cromwell had been loved, and he had loved in return—even now as he admitted he was still unsure how to show it.

Cromwell heard the jangle of keys, and his heart dropped into his stomach.

"Too soon," he aloud. "I am not ready, not yet."

He heard Kingston explain that Cromwell began refusing food three days ago and water two days ago. Kingston said something about Cromwell preparing for his spiritual eternity. Actually, Cromwell's concerns had been far more corporeal: he did not want to risk pissing or shitting himself when the axe-man came towards him.

It was the strange, dragging steps following Kingston that caused Cromwell to turn from his prayers. A faint smell of decay floated through the cold air when the door swung open, and Henry Tudor limped over the threshold.

"How like you my wedding doublet?" Henry demanded as he settled onto a stool. "I am getting married this afternoon." He extended his hand for Cromwell to kiss.

Cromwell studied the ermine trimming and thick embroidery. Garish, unseasonal, and slightly ugly. Instead, he stayed on his knees and kissed the ring that used to belong to Lissie and told Henry:

"His Majesty is every inch the prince that I remember."

"Jesus Christ, can a man every get a 'yes' or 'no' answer out of you?" Henry grumbled. "Do you know why you are to die?"

"I have offended—"

"Oh, shut up, Tom!" Henry shouted. He shot out of the stool, but his bad leg sent the king crashing back to earth. "Fucking Bones of Becket!" Henry cursed at the pain.

"Majesty, I-"

"What do you see when you look at me?"

A monster, a tyrant, a spoiled bully who never quite left the nursery. Cromwell answered, "I see my king."

Henry's fist pounded at the crude writing table. "No! No! You do not. A prince is chosen by God, as God's representative, as God's mouthpiece for his people. When I look in your eyes, Tom, I see only my reflection. Nothing more."

What, was Henry hoping to catch a glimpse of the Holy Ghost?

"I am England," Henry said simply. "I am England's king; therefore, I am the realm. But when I look at you looking at me, I see a man who can envision an England without its king."  
"I cannot imagine the Commonwealth without Your Majesty," Cromwell lied.

Henry slammed his fist into the table and cursed the table for being so bloody solid.

"You love England more than you love me. That is your crime, that is why you must die lower than a dog, a traitor's death." Henry worked himself up to standing in labored stages. "You leave me with no choice. But…" Henry shook his head. "Strike off your head and I hardly kill the hydra. Hundreds, thousands more Thomas Cromwells will come out of the woodpile. Christ's love, I killed Thomas More to show my power. And did I get obedience? No, I got a martyr, and emboldened the papists." Henry glared at Cromwell as though the prisoner should solve the dilemma for his executioner.

"You love England more than me," Henry repeated. "And don't deny it. You lie as easily as you breathe." Henry turned to go. "I cannot have a martyr, I cannot have a traitor, above all I cannot have subjects that love the ground beneath their feet more than their prince. So what am I to do with you?"

Cromwell held off on an answer, just in case the king's question was rhetorical.

"I promised to cut out your heart and make you eat it," Henry continued. "And so I shall." He turned to leave. "You are sailing on the next tide. You will never see England again."

X.

Elizabeth had not expected a royal send-off at the dockside. Gregory held Harr tight and tried to explain to the child that "good-byes are not forever." When the trumpets blasted to announce Henry Tudor, little Tom awoke and bawled. Elizabeth shielded her eyes against the dawn reflected off the Thames. That could not really be the royal standard fluttering against the pink sky. When she moved to throw her arms around Gregory again, Edward moved between them, roughly grabbing Harr from his brother.

"The sooner, the faster you get this done with, the better," Edward muttered as he began shooing Elizabeth, Harr, and Tom's nursemaid up the gangplank. "Here's to help you get settled," he whispered as he pushed a pouch of coins against her stomacher. "Damn it, Lissie, move."

Elizabeth blinked and held her hands to shade her view.

"Mary Mother of God," she murmured. Quick as a dance-step, Elizabeth pivoted around Edward as she precariously balanced Harr on one hip and Tom on the other.

When Edward tracked her line of sight, the shock muted him. The king. The king and _Cromwell_. The king's personal guard hauled Cromwell off the mule he'd been riding when it became clear he was too weak to walk a hundred paces. They used the butt of their axes to shove Cromwell onto the dockside.

The king peered down at Edward. "I told you I would cut out his heart."

And suddenly it became clear: Henry wanted Cromwell in exile, not out of mercy, but so Cromwell's heart would break at little more each day, each morning he woke up knowing he would never again see the England he almost lost his life building.

"Make your farewells to Master Gregory and Master Richard," Henry said impatiently.

Elizabeth held her children tighter to her. She approached Henry, but two battle axes crossed into an perfect "X" blocking her access. Henry laughed at her shocked face.

"You did not honestly think I would let every Cromwell leave, did you? No, no I think better to keep a few Cromwells where I can see them, where they can do as they are bid in Parliament."

"Please, sire. Please don't break their hearts like this," she begged. Henry stared straight ahead.

"I've heard enough of your pleadings to last a lifetime, my lady. You will be silent, unless of course you would like your children to remain on English soil for all time, as well."

In the end, three guards had to wrestle Cromwell's arms from their lock around Gregory. If Elizabeth had not thrown her weight into the fight, she would not have seen Cromwell make one last pull for Gregory, see him put his mouth to son's ear, and tell him:

"I'm coming back. I promise. I will come back."

"Dignity, Master Cromwell. Dignity," counseled Edward as he slipped Cromwell's sinewy arm over his shoulders to get him on the gangplank. Cromwell rounded on Edward like a beaten dog. He grabbed a chunk of Edward's hair and forced his face against Cromwell's.

"One day, Edward," he hissed. "One day you are going to wake up, and the Channel will be black with thousands of ships, and you will know that I am coming back with an army, of soldiers, of traders and bankers. But I'll march straight past Brandon's door, straight past the Howards. But I'll be coming for you. Yours will be the first head I come for." Cromwell shoved Edward off of him as if he were the lowest, filthiest beggar.

The boat was rowed out until the river banks became wider and wider. Elizabeth pressed herself close to Cromwell, and they made a vigil of watching England disappear. Finally, the crew raised the sails, which swallowed up the wind. The ship picked up speed, and Cromwell retched over the side.

"I've lost my boys, I've lost my boys."

Elizabeth pressed Tom and Harr against him, not that she thought that one son could replace another.

When land disappeared into a forgotten memory, Cromwell let Elizabeth urge him to sit with the children on the portside. He sat in such silent disbelief that Elizabeth feared the Tower had stolen his wits until he clumsily pulled her towards him.

"I thought I lost you," he said against her forehead. She settled against him, with nothing to say, too drunk on his weight against her. They huddled that way until Cromwell straightened up, closed his eyes, and sensed the winds change.

"To Calais?" she asked.

"No, no," he replied, almost dreamy. "North. The Netherlands."

She wondered if some monotony might ease his grief. "Edward sent us along with some money. I've been paid in full for my Northern Estates. You might figure out how much we have, what the exchange rates will be. What we'll have to borrow against."

Cromwell gave one of his half-smiles. "You'll have me as your banker, not your husband?"

"I'll have you any way I can. I have it on good authority that we were two of the most notorious sinners in England. No sense in disappointing everyone by showing discretion and propriety. Let's keep on living in sin with each other. Besides, I trust you to make us rich enough again to buy a little respectability."

Elizabeth left Harr in Cromwell's lap. He showed the different coins to the child, explained their different weight and value. Harr seemed most interested in the part where you placed the coins between your teeth.

The winds picked up but the sea stayed calm. So, Elizabeth walked up and down the ship with Tom. When she peered over the side, she made out slim bodies following the boat and misty air puffing out of the water.

"Dolphins!" She exclaimed to little Tom, as if his newborn eyes could make out anything more than her face.

For an ending, Elizabeth felt the sense of a beginning. Part of the story was familiar: she was again a single woman, and her money was again in her name and her name only. And in some of the German free cities, she would be able to hold land in her own name. But the next chapters were hazy. She glanced over her shoulders to where Cromwell and Harr counted and suspiciously eyed Edward's coinage. Then she turned back to the open sea, so expansive it seemed water and sky ran together for eternity. The wind whipped at Elizabeth's cheeks, and she let the tide, the dolphins, and the wheels of fortune carry her to a vast, unknown land just waiting to be re-made by a man such as Cromwell and a woman such as herself.

XII.

Francis Dereham studied the darkening skies as he rested against an apple tree and let his horse nose through the grass. A large droplet splashed off his riding hat. A whole summer without rain, and the moment Thomas Cromwell's feet left English soil, the whole sky decided to open up and rain on Francis Dereham's journey. He stood and shook the water from his hat, hoping Kitty would still think he dressed smartly.

He patted his horse's flanks. "What do you say? Are you man enough?"

He swung himself into the saddle. Francis studied again the bloated rain clouds; it was as good a day as any to head for London.


End file.
